Alex von Tunzelmann | |
Birth Place: | 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 popular 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. 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.