External links
- Riffenburgh bio from publisher Archived January 14, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- Riffenburgh's Entry at BCAFL Hall of Fame [ permanent dead link ]
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Beau Riffenburgh | |
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| Born | 1955 (age 69–70) |
| Pen name | Simon Beaufort |
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| Nationality | British/American |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
| Spouse | Liz Cruwys |
Beau Riffenburgh (born 1955) is a British/American author and historian specializing in polar exploration. He also formerly was an American football coach and author of books on football history.
A native of California, Riffenburgh earned a BA from the University of California at Irvine and a Master’s from the University of Southern California. He was the Senior Writer and Director of Research for National Football League Properties in the 1980s. While there, he wrote or edited eight books, including The Official NFL Encyclopedia. He served briefly as Editor-in-Chief for Total Sports Publishing.
Riffenburgh earned his doctorate at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. From 1992 to 2006, he served as the editor of Polar Record , the world's oldest journal of polar research. He also was the head of the Polar History Group at the Scott Polar Research Institute and a lecturer in the History Faculty of the University of Cambridge.
Riffenburgh has written or edited more than 30 books on exploration, including The Myth of the Explorer, an examination of the relationship of the popular press with exploration; Nimrod, the story of Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, which almost attained both the South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole; and Aurora, the tale of Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia of the Antarctic, a two-volume work that is the most comprehensive reference work ever produced about the Antarctic.
Riffenburgh’s major scholarly book not related to the polar regions is Pinkerton’s Great Detective, a biography of James McParland, whose undercover exploits brought down the Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania coal fields. He has also written three books on Titanic, including the best-selling The Titanic Experience.
While at Cambridge, Riffenburgh served as the head coach of Cambridge's American football team in the British Collegiate American Football League. He was named National Coach of the Year twice in his five seasons (1991–1996). Riffenburgh later spent one season as head coach of the University of Hertfordshire Hurricanes. The team went undefeated and won the National Championship during the 1997–1998 season, and he was again named National Coach of the Year.
Riffenburgh was the first head coach of the Great Britain Bulldogs, the national university American football team, which won the first two European Championships in 1994 and 1996.
He was inducted into the BCAFL's Hall of Fame in 2000 as part of the Hall's founding class. [1] He also was inducted in the founding class of the British American Football Association’s Hall of Fame, the only university representative so honoured.
Riffenburgh has written numerous mystery novels with his wife, Elizabeth Cruwys, under the pseudonym Simon Beaufort. [2]
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