Dillon Rediscovered: The Newspaperman Who Befriended Kings, Presidents and Oil Tycoons

Emile Joseph Dillon witnessed some of the most dramatic events the world has ever seen including, the assassination of a Russian Tsar, the Dreyfus court martial and bloody massacres in Armenia. At a time of shifting geopolitics and the birth of contemporary journalism, Dillon rose to prominence as a special correspondent with The Daily Telegraph of London. Dillon was, however, more than a newspaper journalist - he was a university professor, the author of books on theology, and an adviser to statesmen; he reported on wars but also helped broker international peace treaties.

This is the previously untold story of a life that transferred from the slum streets of Victorian Dublin to the scrumptious salons of Tsarist Russia, from high politics in European capitals to the American oil rush in Mexico in the 1920s. Drawing on never-before-seen letters and notebooks, this book reveals a complicated personal life including, marriages in Russia and Bulgaria, a divorce in Paris and family conflict beyond his death in Barcelona in 1933.

'An illuminating study and superbly readable story of a time when foreign correspondents were all-powerful recorders of the world's news' Jill Abramson, former Executive Editor, The New York Times

'An authoritative, colourful, previously untold story of a picaresque, controversial Irishman who became a world-travelling historic figure of his time in journalism, politics, foreign and domestic affairs, and all manner of intrigue' Leonard Downie Jnr., former Executive Editor, The Washington Post

'Daily Telegraph writers like Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill have led extraordinary lives. Here, with E.J. Dillon, we read the story, not just of a man, but of an era; and all seen through the eyes of a remarkable witness, who changed the way we think of foreign correspondents' Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, columnist, The Daily Telegraph