This is the official website for Alyn Shipton, writer, broadcaster and Jazz historian. This site provides information and links to some of the many projects Alyn has been involved in. A recognized international authority on Jazz, he has written and edited many books on the subject of Jazz and those who make it. These are listed in the 'writing' section of the site. Alyn is also a presenter, writer and producer of Jazz programmes for BBC radio and you can find more information in the broadcasting section. The site also has details of some of the records Alyn has appeared on as a musician and these details can be found in the music section. Alyn is also a Jazz critic for the Times and writes for many other publications listed here.

BIOGRAPHY

Alyn Shipton is an award-winning author and broadcaster, who is jazz critic for The Times in London, and a presenter/producer of jazz programmes for BBC Radio. He was Consultant Editor of the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and has a lifelong interest in oral history, including editing the memoirs of Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham and George Shearing. His first biography of Fats Waller, published in 1988, has scarcely been out of print since. His life of Bud Powell (written with Alan Groves) was the first English language biography of the pianist, and his book Groovin’ High, the life of Dizzy Gillespie, won the 1999 ARSC award for the best research of the year. His monumental New History of Jazz, published in 2001, was Jazz Journalists Book of the Year, and won Alyn the coveted “Jazz Writer of the Year” title in the British Jazz Awards. In 2003 he won the Willis Conover / Marian McPartland Award for lifetime achievement in Jazz Broadcasting. Alyn won an open scholarship to Oxford in 1972, where he read English at St. Edmund Hall. He later went on to take a PhD in music history at Oxford Brookes University. He has been a lecturer in music at Brookes (2002-3), teaching the jazz history course, and he has also given lectures on jazz and American popular music at Exeter University and at the Institute for United States Studies in the University of London. He currently divides his time between living in Oxford, UK, and deep in rural France.