Gwynne Dyer

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Gwynne Dyer bigraphy, stories - Historians

Gwynne Dyer : biography

April 17, 1943 –

Gwynne Dyer, OC (born April 17, 1943) is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.

Dyer was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen. While still in the naval reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1963; an MA in military history from Rice University, Houston, Texas, in 1966; and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King’s College London in 1973. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 1973-77. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism. In 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Circulation

Dyer writes a column on international affairs which is published in over 175 papers in at least 45 countries. Some papers that use Dyer’s column regularly include the Japan Times, The Courier (Ballarat), the Straits Times (Singapore), the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), the Bangkok Post, the Canberra Times, the New Zealand Herald, The Pioneer (New Delhi), DNA (Bombay), Dawn (Karachi), the Tehran Times, Arab News (Saudi Arabia), the Jordan Times, Monday Morning (Beirut), Egypt Today, the Jerusalem Post, Hurriyet Daily News (Istanbul), the Moscow Times, Telegraf (Kiev), Lidove Noviny (Prague), Adevarul (Bucharest), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Information (Copenhagen), NRC Handelsblad (Rotterdam), De Standaard (Brussels), Zeitpunkt (Switzerland), Internazionale (Rome), The New Vision (Uganda), The Star (Nairobi), Zimbabwe Independent, The Citizen (Johannesburg), the Cape Times, Le Droit (Ottawa), NOW (Toronto), La Presse (Montreal), Georgia Straight (Vancouver), Dawson Creek Daily News, Fast Forward Magazine (Calgary), the Winnipeg Free Press the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, the Trinidad Express, the Barbados Advocate, Buenos Aires Herald and the Visayan Daily Star (Philippines).

In the United States, his column appears in the Cincinnati Post, Columbus Dispatch, Dayton Daily News, Hartford Courant, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Raleigh News & Observer, The Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Salt Lake Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Toledo Blade, Winston-Salem Journal and about twenty other papers. Older articles are available online at the columnist’s official website. His 1985 book War and its namesake television series have been aired on BBC and PBS.

Controversial discontinuations

Dyer’s column was discontinued in the Jerusalem Post in 1997 when it was bought by Conrad Black. Black subsequently bought the former Southam chain in Canada, which included most of the country’s big-city English-language dailies, and had Dyer’s column expelled from all of them as well. When the Asper family, owners of Canwest Global, took over ownership of the papers in 2002, they maintained the ban. This had the result that Dyer’s column has since been unavailable in the more mainstream Canadian newspapers, and consequently completely unavailable in large parts of the country. Smaller media companies continue to publish the column, including alternatively owned newspapers such as Torstar’s Hamilton Spectator, Edmonton’s Vue Weekly, Vancouver’s Georgia Straight, New Brunswick’s Telegraph Journal and French paper l’Acadie Nouvelle, Sun Media papers such as the London Free Press and a few local publications of the regional Osprey Media and Black Press (not affiliated with Conrad Black), such as Kamloops This Week and the Red Deer Advocate, as well as the Winnipeg Free Press and Calgary’s independent Fast Forward Weekly.

Dyer speculates that this is due to his opinions on the Arab-Israel conflict and both Black’s and the Asper family’s Likud Party sympathies. In 2005, Dyer released a book of his columns, titled With Every Mistake.

Works

Books

  • War (1985) ISBN 0-517-55615-4
  • War: The Lethal Custom (2005) ISBN 0-7867-1538-3
  • The Defence of Canada: In the Arms of the Empire (1990) ISBN 0-7710-2975-6
  • Ignorant Armies: Sliding Into War in Iraq (2003) ISBN 0-7710-2977-2
  • Future: Tense : The Coming World Order (2004) ISBN 0-7710-2978-0
  • With Every Mistake (2005) ISBN 0-679-31402-4
  • The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq (2007) ISBN 0-7710-2980-2
  • Climate Wars (2008) ISBN 978-0-307-35583-6
  • Crawling from the Wreckage (2010) ISBN 978-0-307-35891-2

Documentaries

  • War (miniseries) (1983 7-part miniseries) The third part of the series named "the Profession of Arms" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
  • The Defence of Canada (1986)
  • Harder Than It Looks (1987)
  • The Human Race (1994)

Radio series

  • Seven Faces of Communism (1978)
  • Brazil (1979)
  • The Catholic Counter-Revolution (1980)
  • War (1981)
  • The Gorbachev Revolution (1988–90)
  • Millennium (1996)
  • on CBC Radio Ideas (2008)(3-part documentary)