Karen Liebreich, MBE, is an author, historian and gardener.
Biography
Liebreich was born in London, and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls. She 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 and 2009, 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 From 2015 to 2018, working with Sarah Cruz also of Abundance London, she created the Chiswick Timeline, a vast, spectacular mural of historic maps of Chiswick from 1593 to the present day, illustrated by local artists from William Hogarth to Peter Blake, covering almost 60 metres of the London Underground bridge arches crossing Turnham Green Terrace.
Works
In 2004, Liebreich wrote Fallen Order, an exposé 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 had 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 the age of 13. The 2009 French translation received substantial media coverage in France and was dramatised for a BBC Radio 4Afternoon Play in December 2012. In 2009, Liebreich wrote The FamilyKitchen 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's secretary, was published by the London Review of Booksafter the death of Pomsel in January 2017. In 2018, after more than three years' work, the Chiswick Timeline was formally opened. The work is a huge public mural covering a previously ugly London Underground bridge over Turnham Green Terrace, West London. It was initiated, developed, managed and co-designed by Karen Liebreich. The mural includes works of art by famous artists with links to Chiswick, some specifically created for the mural by Sir Peter Blake and Jan Pieńkowski.
