Brian Moynahan

Brian Moynahan is an English journalist, historian and biographer. He was born in 1941, the son of the dermatologist Edmund Moynahan of Guy's and Great Ormond Street Hospitals.^[1] He was educated at Sherborne School and University of Cambridge, where he was a Foundation Scholar of Corpus Christi College and editor of the student magazines Cambridge Opinion and Broadsheet. He graduated in 1962 with a double First in history.^[2][3] He was a lead writer with The Yorkshire Post before covering wars in Vietnam, Laos and Borneo, the violencia in Colombia and the American intervention in the Dominican Republic, for Town Magazine, and The Times.^[4] He also wrote on industry and business in the Far East. He was editor of Town before joining the staff of The Sunday Times in 1968. As a foreign correspondent, he covered the Arab-Israeli, Ethiopian and Lebanese conflicts, as well as events in Europe and Russia. He was latterly The Sunday Times Europe editor^[5] based in Paris, before concentrating on writing books.

These include the award-winning history, The Russian Century,^[6][7] The Faith, a history of Christianity, If God Save my Life, a biography of William Tyndale, "a triumph, authoritative, vital, passionate, closely attentive to the sources"^[8] and the best-selling Airport International and Jungle Soldier. Leningrad Siege and Symphony, an account of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, was a Spectator Book of The Year, "Tolstoyan ... by far the fullest and most compelling I have read".^[9]

Works:

• Airport International 1978
• Fool's Paradise 1983
• Claws of the Bear, a history of the Soviet Armed Forces 1989
• Comrades 1917, Russia in Revolution 1992
• The Russian Century 1994
• Rasputin, the Saint who Sinned 1998
• The British Century 1999
• The Faith, a history of Christianity 2003
• If God Spare My Life 2003
• The French Century 2007
• Forgotten Soldiers 2008
• Jungle Soldier 2010
• Leningrad Siege and Symphony, Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony 2014

Review

“A stupendous story, driven by a furious narrative yet biblical in its thematic confrontations of beauty and evil. It’s vivid in three dimensions: The Red Army’s battles with Hitler’s war machine; the ordeals of the Russian people terrorized by the malevolent maniac in the Kremlin; and throughout the faint but swelling counterpoint of hope as the great Dmitri Shostakovich struggles to write the score of his Seventh Symphony to express the soul of his martyred city . . . This is history to cherish.”—Sir Harold Evans, Editor at Large at Reuters, author of The American Century, and publisher of The Russian Century^[10]

References

Interview with Brian Moynahan (Aug 23 2010)