Karen Liebreich

Biography

Liebreich was born in 1959 in London, and studied History at University College London, before completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge. She worked as the cultural assistant at the French Institute in London, and then as a producer at the BBC and the History Channel, where she worked on historical documentaries. Between 2005-09, she ran a historic kitchen garden in Chiswick House, West London, and was the co-founder of Abundance London, a community garden and urban harvesting project. In 2013, she was awarded an MBE for services to horticulture and education

Works

In 2004, Liebreich wrote Fallen Order, an expose of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the 17th century. While researching her doctorate, Liebreich discovered documents in the Vatican archives indicating that the Piarist Order, an order dedicated to providing education to poorer children, had covered up a sexual abuse scandal involving some of their priests. This scandal subsequently contributed to the order's temporary suppression in 1646.

In 2006, Liebreich wrote The Letter in the Bottle about her research to identify the mother who wrote a message in a bottle to express her enduring grief over the death of her son at age 13. The 2009 French translation received substantial media coverage in France and was dramatised for a BBC Radio 4 Afternoon play in December 2012.

In 2009, Liebreich wrote The Family Kitchen Garden, based on her experiences restoring and preserving a historic kitchen garden in the grounds of Chiswick House.

In 2017 Liebreich published The Black Page - interviews with Nazi Film-makers based on her first-hand interviews conducted in the making of various BBC documentaries. An essay based on this on Brunhilde Pomsel, Goebbels' secretary, was published by the London Review of Books after the death of Pomsel in January 2017.