Flora Lewis
Biographical Information
from: The New York TimesFlora
Lewis became The Times Foreign Affairs columnist on June 1, 1980 after serving as
chief of the newspaper's Paris bureau since 1972, when she joined The Times. Four
years later she was given the additional title of European diplomatic correspondent.
Her column appears on the Op-Ed page of The Times twice a week.
Miss Lewis is the third Times correspondent to write the Foreign Affairs column. The
first was Anne O'Hare McCormick, who held the post from 1937 until her death in 1954. Her
successor, C.L. Sulzberger, relinquished the post on his retirement in 1977.
Miss Lewis is a native of Los Angeles, where she attended the University of California.
After receiving her B.A. in 1941, Miss Lewis earned a graduate degree at the Columbia
School of Journalism. She then joined the New York bureau of The Associated Press and was
soon transferred to that agency's Washington bureau.
During World War II Miss Lewis covered the Navy and State Departments for the AP, and
in 1945 - two days before V-J Day - she was assigned to the AP London bureau.
Miss Lewis left the AP in 1946 and for the next several years wrote from Europe for
various newspapers and magazines, including Time, The London Observer, The
Economist of London, France-Soir of Paris and The New York Times Magazine.
In 1956 Miss Lewis joined The Washington Post to cover Eastern Europe, and later
London. In 1965 she opened the New York bureau of The Post
Miss Lewis once wrote a widely syndicated column on U.S. and world affairs that she
started in Paris in 1967. It kept her constantly on the move, taking her to Vietnam five
times in five years; to the Middle East to cover the Six-Day War, and to Chicago and Miami
during the 1968 political conventions.
In December 1985 Miss Lewis received the National Press Club's 13th Annual Fourth
Estate Award for "a lifetime of contributions to American journalism." Among
her other awards are three from the Overseas Press Club one in 1956 for magazine
reporting and two for foreign reporting, in 1962 and 1978. She is a winner of the Columbia
Journalism School's 50th Anniversary Award, the Aspen Institute's Award for
Journalistic Excellence (1977) and the Award for Distinguished Diplomatic Reporting
from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Affairs (1978).
In 1981 she was awarded an honorary degree from Princeton University and in the same
year the French Government presented her with the Legion of Honor Cross of the Chevalier.
Since then she has received several other honorary degrees and awards.
Miss Lewis has published four books: "Case History of Hope," on
Poland, in 1958; "Red Pawn," an account of the Cold War, in 1963; and
"One of our H-Bombs is Missing," the story of the loss and recovery of an
unused bomb in Spain, in 1965; and "Europe: A tapestry of Nations," in
1987, updated in 1992.
Literally scores of articles by Miss Lewis have appeared in anthologies and magazines,
including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Saturday Review,
Atlantic and Life.
In 1945, Miss Lewis married Sydney Gruson, then a foreign correspondent for The New
York Times and now vice chairman of The New York Times Company. The couple were divorced
in 1972. They are the parents of three children.
AWARDS
1988 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Dartmouth College.
1987 Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters, New York University.
1985 Fourth Estate Award, National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
1984 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Columbia University.
1981 Honorary LL.D. Princeton University.
1981 Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, France.
1978 Award for Distinguished Diplomatic Reporting, School of Foreign Affairs,
Georgetown University.
1977 Arthur D. Morse Fellow in Communications and Society, Aspen Institute for
Humanistic Studies.
1963 Columbia Journalism School 50th Anniversary Honor Award.
1960 Award for Best Reporting, Foreign Affairs, Washington D.C.
1956 Overseas Press Club Award, Magazine Reporting.
PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Council, International Institute for Strategic Studies (London).
Board of Directors, Institute for East-West Security Studies (New York).
Member, The Council on Foreign Relations (New York).
PUBLICATIONS (BOOKS ONLY)
Case History of Hope, Doubleday, 1958.
Red Pawn, Doubleday, 1963.
One of Our H-Bombs is Missing, McGraw-Hill; 1965. (Reissued Bantam Paperbacks
1987).
Europe: A Tapestry of Nations, Simon and Schuster, 1987.
(Unwin Hyman, London, 1988).
(Touchstone Books Paperback, 1988).
Updated in 1992 and republished under the new title:
Europe: Road to Unity, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Flora
Lewis
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