Frank McLynn

Francis James McLynn FRHistS FRGS (born 29 August 1941), known as Frank McLynn, is a British author, biographer, novelist, historian and journalist.

He is known for biographies of Napoleon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Carl Jung, Richard Francis Burton and Henry Morton Stanley.

McLynn was educated at the John Fisher School Purley, and won an Open Scholarship in Classics to Wadham College, Oxford^[1]. Once at Oxford, McLynn switched to Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). McLynn explained his choice by stating that "history and literature were my first loves, and I would always read them in future life, but I doubted that I would ever pick up a book on economics or philosophy again". This multi-disciplinary course formed part of McLynn's ambition to become a polymath.

McLynn entered the professional world as a journalist. He developed an interest in Latin America, and spent two years in Colombia as Deputy Director of the British Council, and a subsequent year in Argentina as a Parry/Ford Foundation Fellow. He was awarded a PhD in the early 1970s for a thesis on Argentina in the 1860s.

Prior to and during his career as a writer, McLynn worked in academic positions in the UK and USA.

McLynn was shortlisted for the NCR Book Award for Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography

*Published in the USA as Richard and John: Kings at War (2007), Da Capo Press

• Of No Country: An Anthology of the Works of Sir Richard Burton (1990), London: Scribners

• Cheltenham Prize for Literature (1985; for The Jacobite Army in England)^[2]
• Shortlisted, McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year (1989, for Charles Edward Stuart)^[3]

• Legacy and memory of Napoleon