Alex von Tunzelmann | |
---|---|
Born | 1977 (age 45–46) United Kingdom |
Occupation | Historian Screenwriter Author |
Nationality | British |
Education | Brighton and Hove High School |
Alma mater | University College, Oxford |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Subject | Cold War British Empire |
Alex von Tunzelmann (born 1977) is a British historian, screenwriter and author.
Tunzelmann has stated that her surname is of German ancestry originating in Saxony in Germany and that she has family connections from Estonia since 1600 and New Zealand since 1850. [1]
Tunzelmann was educated at Brighton and Hove High School, [2] an independent school for girls in Brighton, and at University College at the University of Oxford. She read history and edited both Cherwell and Isis .
Tunzelmann has contributed to The Political Animal by Jeremy Paxman, The Truth About Markets by John Kay, Does Education Matter? by Alison Wolf, and Not on the Label by Felicity Lawrence. She has been recognized as a Financial Times Young Business Writer of the Year. She collaborated with Jeremy Paxman on his book, On Royalty .
From 2008 to 2016, Tunzelmann wrote a column for The Guardian entitled "Reel history", in which she discussed and rated popular films for their historical accuracy. [3] She has also written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, Conde Nast Traveller, BBC Lonely Planet Magazine , and The Daily Beast . [4] She published Blood and Sand about the Suez Crisis of 1956 in 2016. [5]
She has appeared on the literary discussion radio programme Litbits on Resonance FM, discussing literature and hair[ citation needed ]. She appears regularly on Sky News and on BBC current affairs programmes.
Tunzelmann wrote the script for the movie Churchill , a film that received mixed reviews. Noted Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts gave the film a scathing review, writing "Ms. von Tunzelmann—who once had a column in The Guardian that attacked movies for their historical errors—has twisted the truth about Churchill and D-Day in a truly repulsive way". [9]
She also wrote episodes of the RAI period drama Medici , focusing on the powerful Florentine family.
The Hurricane is a 1999 American biographical sports drama film directed and produced by Norman Jewison. The film stars Denzel Washington as Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter, a former middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted for a triple murder in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. The script was adapted by Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon from Carter's 1974 autobiography The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender To 45472 and the 1991 non-fiction work Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton.
The Gathering Storm is a BBC–HBO co-produced television biographical film about Winston Churchill in the years just prior to World War II. The title of the film is that of the first volume of Churchill's largely autobiographical six-volume history of the war, which covered the period from 1919 to 3 September 1939, the day he became First Lord of the Admiralty.
Edwina Cynthia Annette Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma,, was an English heiress, socialite, relief worker and the last vicereine of India as the wife of Rear Admiral The 1st Viscount Mountbatten of Burma.
Carrington is a 1995 British biographical film written and directed by Christopher Hampton about the life of the English painter Dora Carrington (1893–1932), who was known simply as "Carrington". The screenplay is based on Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, the 1967-68 two-volume biography of writer and critic Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) by Michael Holroyd.
The Scarlet Empress is a 1934 American historical drama film starring Marlene Dietrich and John Lodge about the life of Catherine the Great. It was directed and produced by Josef von Sternberg from a screenplay by Eleanor McGeary, loosely based on the diary of Catherine arranged by Manuel Komroff.
That Hamilton Woman, also known as Lady Hamilton, is a 1941 black-and-white historical film drama produced and directed by Alexander Korda for his British company during his exile in the United States. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the film tells the story of the rise and fall of Emma Hamilton, dance-hall girl and courtesan, who married Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, and later became Admiral Horatio Nelson's mistress.
The Rise of Catherine the Great is a 1934 British historical film about the rise to power of Catherine the Great. It was directed by Paul Czinner, and stars Elisabeth Bergner as Catherine, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., as Grand Duke Peter, Dorothy Hale as Countess Olga, and Flora Robson as Empress Elizabeth.
Fallen Idol(s) may refer to:
David Reynolds, is a British historian. He is Emeritus Professor of International History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He attended school at Dulwich College on a scholarship and studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo and Sciences Po in Paris.
Red heat is a practice of using colours to determine the temperature of metal
Chemical weapons were widely used by the United Kingdom in World War I. The use of poison gas was suggested by Winston Churchill and others in Mesopotamia during the interwar period, and also considered in World War II, although it appears that they were not actually used in these conflicts. While the UK was a signatory of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which outlawed the use of poison gas shells, the conventions omitted mention of deployment from cylinders.
Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean is a historical study of the political scene in the Caribbean during the 1950s and 1960s, written by the British historian Alex von Tunzelmann and first published in 2011 by Henry Holt and Company. Educated at Oxford University, Von Tunzelmann (1977-) had previously published a study of the independence of India, entitled Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (2007).
The Monuments Men is a 2014 war film directed by George Clooney and written and produced by Clooney and Grant Heslov. The film stars an ensemble cast including Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.
The Imitation Game is a 2014 period biographical thriller film directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore, based on the 1983 biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
Tania Chernova was a Russian-American woman known for serving in the Red Army as a sniper during World War II. She traveled to Belarus to get her grandparents out of Russia, but upon arriving learned that German invaders had already killed them. After that, she joined the Soviet resistance on the Eastern Front, becoming an effective sniper.
Darkest Hour is a 2017 British biographical film about Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, in his early days as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and the May 1940 war cabinet crisis, depicting his refusal to seek a peace treaty with Nazi Germany amid their advance into Western Europe. The film is directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten. Along with Oldman, the cast includes Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill, Lily James as Elizabeth Layton, Stephen Dillane as Viscount Halifax, Ronald Pickup as Neville Chamberlain, and Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI. The title of the film refers to a phrase describing the early days of the war, which has been widely attributed to Churchill.
Churchill is a 2017 British historical war-drama film directed by Jonathan Teplitzky, which portrays Winston Churchill in June 1944 – especially in the hours leading up to D-Day. The film stars Brian Cox as the title character, with Miranda Richardson and John Slattery in supporting roles.
Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill is a 2016 book by Candice Millard covering Winston Churchill's exploits during the Boer War. Her third book, Hero of the Empire garnered favorable response by major newspaper companies worldwide and was a winner of the 2017 Kansas Notable Book Awards.
Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History (2021), is a book authored by Alex von Tunzelmann and published by Headline Publishing Group in response to the removal or defacement of statues during the George Floyd protests of 2020. In it, von Tunzelmann explores the stories of twelve statues or groups of statues of historical figures, including the contexts in which they were erected, the reasons for which they later became contentious, and the circumstances leading to their removal, destruction or vandalism.