David Reynolds (historian)


David Reynolds, is a British historian. He is Emeritus Professor of International History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

Biography

Reynolds attended school at Dulwich College on a scholarship, and studied history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Harvard University. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma universities, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo and Sciences Po in Paris.
Reynolds was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, 2005, and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005. His research and writing specialise in the two world wars and the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge in 2013-15 and retired from University teaching in 2019. In 2022, a number of his former PhD students presented him with a Festschrift published in the journal Diplomacy & Statecraft. He has served on academic advisory boards for the redevelopment of the Imperial War Museum First World War Galleries and Second World War Galleries. In 2021, he succeeded Roger Knight as President of Cambridge University Cricket Club.

Documentaries

Reynolds has made thirteen documentaries on 20th-century history for the BBC, most recently the three-part BBC Two series Long Shadow, based on his award-winning book about the legacies and memory of 1914–18 and a trilogy of films about the Big Three allies in the Second World War: World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel, World War Two: 1942 and Hitler's Soft Underbelly and World War Two: 1945 and the Wheelchair President. All these films have been directed by Russell Barnes.
Reynolds was also the writer and presenter of the award-winning ninety-part series America, Empire of Liberty, broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Personal life

Reynolds is married, with one son and three grandchildren.

Awards and honours

Books

  • 1981: The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–1941: a Study in Competitive Co-operation University of North Carolina Press
  • 1988: An Ocean Apart: the Relationship between Britain and America in the 20th Century – co-author David Dimbleby. Hodder & Stoughton
  • 1991: Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century. Longman
  • 1994: Allies at War: the Soviet, American and British Experience 1939–1945.. Palgrave Macmillan
  • 1994: The Origins of the Cold War in Europe: International Perspectives. Yale University Press
  • 1995: Rich Relations: the American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945. Random House
  • 2000: One World Divisible: a Global History since 1945.. Allen Lane
  • 2001: . Ivan R. Dee
  • 2004: In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. Random House
  • 2005: Christ's: a Cambridge College Over Five Centuries. Macmillan
  • 2006: From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the International History of the 1940s. Oxford University Press
  • 2007: Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century. Allen Lane
  • 2008: FDR's World: War, Peace, and Legacies. Palgrave Macmillan
  • 2009: America, Empire of Liberty: A New History. David Reynolds
  • 2013: The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century. Simon & Schuster UK ; W. W. Norton, 2014 US
  • 2016: Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970–1990. Oxford University Press
  • 2018: The Kremlin Letters: Stalin's Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt, with Vladimir Pechatnov. Yale University Press
  • 2019: Island Stories: Britain and its History in the Age of Brexit HarperCollins
  • 2023: Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him HarperCollins

Broadcasting (as writer and presenter)