{{Short description|British military historian (1929–2021)}} {{For|those of a similar name|Lynn McDonald (disambiguation)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Lyn Macdonald''',<ref name="penguin">[http://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/lyn-macdonald/21626/ Lyn MacDonald], Penguin Books authors</ref> (31 May 1929 – 1 March 2021)<ref>{{cite news |last1=Holland |first1=James |title=Lyn Macdonald obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/21/lyn-macdonald-obituary |access-date=21 April 2021 |work=The Guardian |date=21 April 2021}}</ref> was a British military historian, one of relatively few women in the field.<ref name="Howard2008">{{cite book|author=Michael Howard|title=A Part of History: Aspects of the British Experience of the First World War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I78hAQAAIAAJ|date=20 August 2008|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|isbn=978-0-8264-9813-7|page=158}}</ref> Macdonald was best known for a series of books on the First World War that draw on first hand accounts of surviving veterans. == Life == Macdonald lived near Cambridge, England, and worked as a BBC radio producer until 1973, when she began working on a documentary with the Old Comrades Association of the 13th (Service) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, who were visiting the battlefields of the Western Front.<ref name="macmillan">[https://us.macmillan.com/author/lynmacdonald/ Lyn Macdonald], Macmillan authors</ref><ref name=Times>{{cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/lyn-macdonald-obituary-8r30gcwcv|title=Lyn Macdonald obituary|date=8 April 2021|newspaper=The Times|access-date=9 April 2021}}</ref> The first of her influential books took its title, ''They Called It Passchendaele'', from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon. Other works included ''Somme''.<ref name=Cooke>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/28/somme-lyn-macdonald-in-parenthesis-david-jones|title=The books that honour the bloodiest of battles|date=28 June 2016|website=The Guardian|author=Rachel Cooke|access-date=9 April 2021}}</ref> In 1988, she led a party of veterans to the Western Front, accompanied by Sebastian Faulks, who was inspired by the experience to write his novel ''Birdsong''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/15/sebastian-faulks-birdsong-first-world-war-front-line-1993|title=Back to the first world war front line with Tommy – archive, 1993|date=15 September 2017|website=The Guardian|author=Sebastian Faulks|access-date=10 April 2021}}</ref>
Macdonald bequeathed an archive of about 600 recordings of interviews with veterans of the First World War to the Imperial War Museum.<ref name=Times/>
==Works== *''How to be a Supercook and Work as Well'' (1976). *''They Called It Passchendaele'' (1978). *''French Cooking Without Tears'' (1979). *''The Roses of No Man's Land'' (1980). *''Somme'' (1983), a history of the legendary and horrifying battle that has haunted the minds of succeeding generations.<ref name=Cooke/> *''1914: The Days of Hope'' (1987). *''1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War'' (1988). *''1915: The Death of Innocence'' (1993). *''To the Last Man: Spring 1918'' (1998). *''Ordeal By Fire: Witnesses to the Great War'' (editor, 2001). *''At the Going Down of the Sun: 365 Soldiers from the Great War'' ([http://www.lannoo.com Lannoo], Tielt., 2001), co-writer with Ian Connerty, Sir Martin Gilbert, Peter Hart and Nigel Steel.
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Macdonald, Lyn}} Category:Historians of World War I Category:BBC radio producers Category:British military writers Category:British military historians Category:1929 births Category:2021 deaths Category:20th-century British historians Category:21st-century British historians Category:British women radio producers Category:British radio producers Category:People educated at Hutchesons' Grammar School