Bartle Bull has written from the Middle East for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Foreign Policy, Die Welt, and other publications. He is the only western journalist to have been embedded with the Mahdi Army in Iraq. He sits on the Visiting Committee of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. His 2017 Showtime documentary film Cradle of Champions, following three young athletes competing in the world's oldest amateur boxing tournament, received numerous awards and rave reviews.