T.J. Binyon, 68, Pushkin Biographer

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T.J. Binyon, whose death October 7 of heart failure at age 68 was reported in British papers, was the award-winning biographer of “Pushkin,” named by The New York Sun a Biography of the Year for 2003.


Binyon was a senior research fellow in Russian at Wadham College, Oxford. He was well known to the reading public on both sides of the Atlantic for his interest in crime and mystery writing, and had a regular column in the Times Literary Supplement that once inspired poet Joseph Brodsky to call him a “genius of the prose poem.”


Binyon also wrote thrillers, and in 1989 produced an academic study of the detective novel, “Murder Will Out.” He also helped establish the Fulbright Raymond Chandler Visiting Fellowships to bring established crime writers from America to Wadham College.


“Pushkin” was the result of a decade of research and writing, and The Sun’s reviewer called it “one of the great biographies of recent times … Everything we thought we knew about Pushkin becomes more shaded by Mr. Binyon’s tireless elaboration.”


“Pushkin” was awarded the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize, a top British award for nonfiction.


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