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Jonathan Fryer is a familiar voice to listeners to BBC Radio 4. For over a decade, he was the Quaker contributor to Thought for the Day on the Today programme, later moving to From Our Own Correspondent. He has worked or traveled in over 150 countries since first going to the Vietnam War as a freelance journalist.
His literary output falls into two distinct categories. An Orientalist by academic training, Jonathan lectures part-time at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies. His first book was a history of the Great Wall of China, and his current commission is a history of Kuwait and its oil industry. But in between, he has published 10 volumes of biography and studies of literary and artistic circles, including lives of Dylan Thomas, Christopher Isherwood and Robbie Ross. His Soho in the Fifties and Sixties is one of the best-selling titles in the National Portrait Gallery’s award-winning series of Character Sketches. Some of his books have been translated into French, German, Dutch and Romanian.
Long resident in Brussels, Jonathan moved to London in 1981, since when he has been active in Liberal Democrat politics, only narrowly missing being elected to the European Parliament in June 2004.
external links
Jonathan Fryer’s website: www.jonathanfryer.wordpress.com
how I found the agency
From the writer's point of view, a good agent is like an ideal pair of shoes, which give you support and protection while helping you along your professional way. It's essential that they feel comfortable, but they also have to be robust. Without them, one is unlikely to get as far or to advance unhurt. I met Andrew first through the Biographers' Club he runs, a stimulating forum and social meeting place for those of us who spend large amounts of time buried in archives or interviewing strangers in pursuit of our subject. The empathy he displayed for the genre - which is quite distinct from fiction and other forms of writing - made me realise that this was the sort of agent I needed, who would not just place books, but chew over ideas, and sometimes come up with appropriate journalistic assignments and speaking engagements as well.
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