Nick Bunker (born November 25, 1958) is a British author, historian and a former journalist with the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...

'.''

Biography

A Londoner by birth, Bunker attended Watford Boys Grammar School in Hertfordshire, England. Bunker attended

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, where he graduated with a double first in English literature in 1981. In 1983 Bunker completed a master's degree at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Career

Bunker became a news reporter for the ''

Liverpool Echo The ''Liverpool Echo'' is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror North West & North Wales – a subsidiary company of Reach plc and is based in St Paul's Square, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Sunday, and is Liver ...

'' as part of a team which won the ''Echo'' a 1985 British Press Award for its campaigning journalism. Bunker then spent six years as a ''Financial Times'' journalist. He switched careers in the 1990s to work in investment analysis and corporate finance. For more than a decade until 2007 Bunker was a member of the management committee and then chairman of the board of the

Freud Museum The Freud Museum in London is a museum dedicated to Sigmund Freud, located in the house where Freud lived with his family during the last year of his life. In 1938, after escaping Nazi annexation of Austria he came to London via Paris and s ...

in Hampstead, London, the last home of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

. Bunker's first book, ''Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and their World'' (2010) was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction (now the Baillie Gifford Prize). This was followed in 2014 by ''An Empire on the Edge'', which explored the immediate origins of the Revolutionary War centring on the

Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell t ...

and placing it in its global context in the China tea trade and the near collapse of the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

in 1772. Besides winning the George Washington Prize and being a Pulitzer finalist, ''An Empire on the Edge'' also won the 2015 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award for the best recently released book about the period. Researched in London, Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere Bunker's third book, ''Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity'' (2018) dealt with the first four decades of Franklin’s life and his emergence as a scientist with his electrical experiments in the 1740s. On January 17, 2019 Bunker gave the annual Benjamin Franklin Birthday Lecture at the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in Philadelphia, with the title ''How Did Benjamin Franklin Become a Physicist''? Bunker was the senior historical adviser for ''Pilgrims'', a two-hour PBS ''American Experience'' film directed by Ric Burns, which first aired in the US at Thanksgiving 2015 and in the UK as ''The Mayflower Pilgrims: Behind the Myth'' in 2016.

Bibliography

''Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2010) , and London: The Bodley Head (2010), ''An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2014), . London: The Bodley Head (2015), ''Young Benjamin Franklin: The Birth of Ingenuity''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2018),

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bunker, Nick British writers 1958 births Living people