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Timothy John Binyon (18 February 1936 – 7 October 2004) was an English scholar and crime writer. He was a great-nephew of the poet Laurence Binyon.

Early life

T. J. Binyon was born in Leeds, where his father Denis was a university lecturer. When, aged 18, doing his National Service, he was assigned to the Joint Services School for Linguists in Bodmin, Cornwall, to learn Russian. There, in 1954, the young soldiers, among them Alan Bennett, Michael Frayn and Dennis Potter, were trained to serve as translators and interpreters in the Cold War. It was there that Binyon's interest in Russian language and literature was kindled.

Education and teaching career

He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, but read German and Russian instead of History, which had been his original plan. After graduating he spent a year at Moscow State University. On returning to England, he took up teaching Russian literature at the University of Leeds. Eventually, in 1968, he became a fellow of Wadham College. Oxford, and taught in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. He served as Dean of Wadham during the 1970s and 80s and retired in the early 2000s.

Crime fiction author and reviewer

Apart from his academic career, Binyon had a great interest in crime fiction. He worked as a reviewer of detective fiction for The Times Literary Supplement and the London Evening Standard and wrote a theoretical book—"Murder Will Out": The Detective in Fiction (OUP, 1989)—and two crime novels, Swan Song (1982) and Greek Gifts (1988).

As emeritus, Binyon became a prize-winning author with a biography of Aleksandr Pushkin, Pushkin: A Biography (2002), it was the Samuel Johnson Prize winner of 2003. The book received critical acclaim and was praised by John Bayley in Literary Review: "No other work on Pushkin on the same scale, and with the same grasp of atmosphere and detail, exists in English, or in any other language apart from Russian."

Marriages and death

Binyon was married twice, first to Felicity Butterwick (1974–1992) and, after a divorce, to Helen Ellis (from 2000 up to his death). He died, aged 68, of sudden heart failure in his house in Witney, Oxfordshire, while doing research for what was to be his next book, on Mikhail Lermontov.

References

1. ^ "T. J. Binyon". The Independent. 13 October 2004. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022.
2. "Obituary: Tim Binyon". The Guardian. 19 October 2004. Archived from the original on 17 March 2023.
3. The Daily Telegraph
4. ^ Elliott, Geoffrey; Shukman, Harold (2003). Secret Classrooms: A Memoir of the Cold War. St Ermin's. ISBN 9781903608135.
5. Bayley, John (September 2002). "As He Lay Dying, He Called for Cloudberries". Literary Review.

• 1936 births
• 2004 deaths
• 20th-century British Army personnel
• Military personnel from Leeds
• Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford
• Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford
• Moscow State University alumni
• Writers from Leeds
• People from Witney
• 20th-century English male writers
• 20th-century English non-fiction writers
• English male non-fiction writers
• British Army soldiers