Cornelius John Ryan

Background

Cornelius John Ryan was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of John Joseph Ryan and Amelia Clohisey.

Education

After graduating from the Irish Christian Brothers Academy, Ryan qualified for entry to the Irish Academy of Music, where he studied the violin.

Career

After a brief career with salon orchestras and within months of the outbreak of World War II, Ryan abandoned the violin and left Ireland to become secretary to Garfield Weston, a member of parliament in Great Britain. In 1941, Ryan found his first reporting job with the London office of Reuters News Agency, where he displayed a flair for writing and research.

He survived the Luftwaffe's London Blitz of 1940-1943 and joined the London Daily Telegraph as a war correspondent in 1943. He covered the arrival and training of American troops in England through the landings and days of the Normandy invasion. Afterward, Ryan followed General George S. Patton's Third Army on its victorious march across Europe.

In 1945, Ryan opened the Daily Telegraph's Tokyo bureau, where he covered the postwar atomic bomb tests. He was promoted to Middle Eastern bureau chief and sent to Jerusalem in 1946, where he covered the Palestinian conflict between Britain and Israel. He also acted as a stringer for Time magazine and the St. Louis Post Dispatch. His work for Time provided Ryan with an opportunity to delve into news summary and analysis as opposed to straight reportage. From this experience, he acquired the skill of telling the news as a story.

Time brought Ryan to its New York City headquarters in 1947. In 1950 he gained American citizenship. That same year Ryan quit work for Time and joined the "Newsweek" television program as a reporter. Ryan's postwar sojourn in Tokyo inspired his first two books, Star-Spangled Mikado, coauthored by Frank Kelly (1948), and MacArthur (1950). He edited Across the Space Frontier in 1952 and Wernher von Braun's Conquest of the Moon the next year. "All of them, " Ryan remarked critically, "failed to hit the gong. "

In 1950 he joined Collier's as an associate editor. He remained there until that publication failed in 1956, a crushing blow for Ryan, who had been working on his magnum opus, The Longest Day, for seven years and was $20, 000 in debt from research expenses. For three years his wife's salary supported the family and Ryan's research, until Dewitt Wallace of Reader's Digest hired Ryan as a staff reporter.

After three years he became a roving editor, a position he retained until his death. Ryan's greatest literary accomplishments were his three international best-sellers, The Longest Day (1959), The Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974). Ryan referred to Stendhal, who, when asked why he described the Battle of Waterloo as he did, replied, "I simply wanted to know what happened. " The Longest Day was a smashing success. Atlantic Monthly called it "incomparably the best of war histories. "

Ryan then wrote a screenplay for a movie version (1962) that set box-office records. The book's success finally bailed the Ryans out of debt. They purchased an estate in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where Ryan began to research The Last Battle, a book describing the fall of Berlin. Although disenchanted with the "new historian" label, Ryan conceded that he took a unique approach. "What was missing, " Ryan explained, "was the story of wartime events told in terms of human spirit. " To fill this void, he chose to write about ordinary people. War was simply the framework "to show people at every level of society in all their bravery and compassion. "

To accomplish this study of individual reactions to war, he invested the then staggering sum of $60, 000 in The Last Battle. To properly research and write such histories necessitated interviewing as many as three thousand to six thousand people who had been eyewitnesses to the events. Ryan took ten years to write The Longest Day, six to finish The Last Battle, and seven for A Bridge Too Far, for which he interviewed Otto Gunshe, the last man to see Hitler alive. He even persuaded the Soviets to give him access to their archives, thus becoming the first American since the 1930's to view Russian documents.

Three years into writing his last book, Ryan became ill. Despite several operations and constant pain, he refused to give up his work. He died in New York.

Achievements

• Cornelius Ryan was mainly known for his writings on popular military history, especially his World War II books: "The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day" (1959), "The Last Battle" (1966), and "A Bridge Too Far" (1974). Critics described these works as a new genre- history emphasizing suspense as well as accuracy. At the time of his death, "A Bridge Too Far" had reached second place on the New York Times best-seller list. "The Longest Day" and "The Last Battle" had sold more than ten million hardcover copies in twenty languages, a measure of Ryan's success at combining impeccable research and personal experience with fluent writing.

Works

More photos

• book

  • “One Minute to Ditch!”

    (Prize-winning True Stories of the Supreme Moment—When Men...)

  • Macarthur Man Of Action

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • A Bridge Too Far

    (Reviews the individuals, tactics, and events involved in ...)

  • Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin

    (The classic account of the final offensive against Hitler...)

  • The Gospels of the Sundays and Festivals, Vol. 2: With an Introduction, Parallel Passages, Notes, and Moral Reflections (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Gospels of the Sundays and Festivals, Vo...)

  • The Star Spangled Mikado
  • Der letzte Kampf
  • The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

Views

Quotations: Ryan said about the war: "I was too horrified and too young then to fully appreciate and understand what I saw. "

The author said about his writings: "There is nothing new in what I am doing, It's only old-fashioned reporting. "

Connections

Ryan married writer Kathryn Ann Morgan, who was an editor for House and Home and Architectural Forum. They had two children.

Father:

John Joseph Ryan

Mother:

Amelia Clohisey

Spouse:

Kathryn Ann Morgan

References

• Cornelius Ryan: D-Day War Reporter