Paul Chrystal
Paul Chrystal attended the Universities of Hull and Southampton where he took degrees in Classics. For the next thirty-five years he worked in medical publishing, much of the time as an international sales director for one market or another while latterly creating medical educational programmes for the pharmaceutical industry. He worked for companies such as Churchill Livingstone, Wiley-Blackwell, CRC Press, Academic Press and Elsevier.
He has since been history advisor to local visitor attractions such as the National Trust in York, writing features for national newspapers, and broadcasting on BBC Radio York, BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Tees, on the Radio 4 PM programme and on the BBC World Service.
He blogs and podcasts, and is a contributor to a number of history and archaeology magazines; he is author of over 120 books and articles published since 2010 on a wide range of subjects including classical, social and military history; social histories of tea, coffee, chocolate and sweets; BAOR, and the ‘Troubles’; many of his books are on York and Yorkshire. His latest book is ‘The History of the World in 106 Pandemics, Poxes, Plagues & Epidemics: from the plague of Athens to COVID-19 – due for publication in early 2021.
He is a regular reviewer for and contributor to ‘Classics for All’, editorial advisor for Yale University Press and a contributor to the classics section of ‘Bibliographies on Line’ published by Oxford University Press.
In 2019 he was guest speaker for Vassar College New York’s London Programme in association with Goldsmith University. In 2020 he took over as History Editor for the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal having previously been editor of York Historian.
In 2021 Paul worked on research for an episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are ? featuring York.