Danny Danziger

Long before he wrote history, Danny Danziger built a reputation on the interview, most durably in the Independent series Best of Times, Worst of Times, and later as a columnist for the Sunday Times. Born in 1953 and registered as Daniel Guggenheim Danziger, he first drew wide attention with Eton Voices in 1988, a set of frank conversations with former pupils of the school. 1215: The Year of Magna Carta was written with John Gillingham, professor of history at the London School of Economics and a specialist in the Angevin kings, and published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2003. It uses King John setting his seal to the charter at Runnymede in June 1215 as a hinge, then spends most of its length on what that year actually felt like: schooling, the church, hunting, medicine, and trial by ordeal. Danziger had already applied the same method to an earlier date in The Year 1000, written with Robert Lacey.