James Munson Biography

James Munson read Modern History at Oxford University between 1966 and 1969. In 1968 he won the Matthew Arnold Historical Essay Prize and, in the following year, began his doctorate in Victorian religious and political history. In 1974 he received his D. Phil. degree.

For ten years he taught history in the University. In 1981 he began writing scripts for BBC Radio and Television and by 1991 he had written scripts for over 60 programmes. His seven part series on Queen Victoria, written with Richard Mullen, led to a highly successful BBC book and two oth

James Munson has also written for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers including The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, The Illustrated London News, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, The Listener, Country Life, Die Presse (Vienna), Radio Times, British Heritage, Essex Countryside, The Oxford Times, Essex Journal, Orient Express, Contemporary Review, Singapore Airlines, The Economist, Catholic Herald, The Baptist Quarterly, The (Cambridge) Historical Journal, Church History, and The British Journal of Educational Studies.

In 1994 he was appointed Literary Editor of Contemporary Review, the monthly journal of international affairs founded in 1866. He has recently finished researching a biography of the Victorian radical reformer and publisher, John Cassell, and is presently working, again with Richard Mullen, on a book on Victorian travel to Europe.