Lucien George, former journalist of “world”, died

The Lebanese journalist and entrepreneur, ex-corner of the “world” in Lebanon during the civil war, died Friday, February 17, at 85 years old.

by Alain Frachon

The war came from the bottom of the corridor, where the Telex in the newspaper were, rue des Italiens (19 e arrondissement) on the fifth floor, territory of international service. We were often a few minutes from the closure. We were waiting for “Lucien George”, the paper of our correspondent in Beirut. It was Lebanese wars time (1975-1990). Were were the rockets of some and the missiles of others, “the Lucien George” still arrived. Just in time. Telex in separate pieces according to electricity failures in the Lebanese capital.

Lucien George died in Beirut, Friday, February 17, of cancer, at the age of 85. He was Lebanese, which his name does not necessarily say. Lebanese, first. In love with a country he saw today get rid of but which he refused to despair. Surrounded by special envoys of the world, “Lucien” was, in Beirut and elsewhere, one of the pillars of the Middle Eastern cover at the end of the 20th ^{e century.}

He was Lebanese even in this ability to always start again, build, rebuild, he said, he whose professional life was punctuated by the alternation of battles and moments of peace. Gray blue eyes, beard and whit whitewas over the years, rolling the “R” in Arabic as in French, Lucien George loved life – all life. Nothing, bombings, branch cars, massacres, assassinations and other political tragedies, not even the three abductions of which he was the victim, nor the atrocious explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, nothing waves the energy of this man . Lucien George overflowed with charm, humor and intelligence. He crossed trials like checkpoints – with a placidity of Grand Lord.

analytical and nuanced

ll was not only a journalist – thirty years corresponding to the “world”. He was an entrepreneur, publisher, defender of La Francophonie. The former student of Christian Schools in Tripoli and Jesuit Fathers in Beirut was alone a piece of France in the Lebanese capital.

He was born on April 28, 1937 in Paris, in a Christian family Maronite. His father, goalkeeper from the North Lebanon mountain, fled the famine of the years 1915-1916 and made a fortune in West Africa. His mother is of a penniless family of Tripoli but at home we read Racine, Balzac and Voltaire and we worship De Gaulle. Studies of law, then, very quickly, journalism in the French-speaking daily L’Orient (which will become the East day) of which he will be the director at 33 years old. At the dawn of the Lebanese wars, in the Mitan of the 1970s, he is also the correspondent of Figaro and the Nouvel Observateur – and his articles are taken up by the evening of Brussels and the Italian La Repubblica, among other European newspapers.

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