Charles Saatchi

Origins and early life

Charles Saatchi was born on 9 June 1943 in Baghdad, to Nathan Saatchi and Daisy Ezer, both Iraqi Jews — Britannica and the reference works say so in as many words — and in 1946-47 the family fled the rising persecution of Iraq's Jews, who were being shut out of schools, land and public service, for London.

Work and career

There, in 1970, he founded with his brother Maurice the agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which by 1986 had become the largest advertising agency in the world; its poster 'Labour isn't working' for the Conservative campaign of 1979 is the most famous political advertisement in British history, and the brothers went on to found M&C Saatchi in 1995. His second career made him one of the most influential art collectors of the age: the Saatchi Gallery, opened in 1985, and the exhibition Sensation of 1997 launched the Young British Artists — Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, the Chapman brothers — on the world, and his collecting, buying and selling has shaped the contemporary art market for four decades.

This fiche records also that in 2013 he accepted a police caution for assault after photographs of an altercation with his then wife, the writer Nigella Lawson, were published; the marriage ended that year. He figures in this directory by his documented Jewish parents.