Andrew Mango

Andrew Mango was a British author and broadcaster who specialized in Turkish studies. He was born in Istanbul, Turkey, as one of the three sons of a prosperous Anglo-Russian family. He grew up in a multilingual and multicultural environment, mastering several languages, including Turkish, English, French, and Greek. He worked as a translator in the press office of the British Embassy in Ankara during the Second World War, and then moved to Britain in 1947 to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies, where he obtained a doctorate in Persian literature. He joined the BBC's Turkish section in 1948 and spent his entire career in the External Services, becoming the head of the South European Service in 1972. He retired in 1986 and devoted himself to writing and lecturing on Turkish affairs. He published several books and articles on Turkey's history, politics, and culture, including a comprehensive biography of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, which was widely praised as a definitive work. He also wrote books on Turkey's relations with the West, the Kurds, and the Islamic world, as well as a memoir of his childhood in Istanbul. He was regarded as one of the leading experts on Turkey in the English-speaking world, and was frequently consulted by diplomats, journalists, and academics. He died in London in 2014 at the age of 88.