Ted Morgan (March 30, 1932 – December 13, 2023) was a French-American biographer, journalist, and historian.^[1]

Morgan was bornCount Sanche Charles Armand Gabriel de Gramont inGeneva. He was the son of Gabriel Antoine Armand,Count de Gramont (1908–1943), a French diplomat^[2] who served as a pilot in the Frenchescadrille in England during World War II, and Marie-HélèneNegroponte, sister toDimitri Negroponte, in 1931.^[3][4] After his father's death, his mother married Jacques de Thier, the Belgian Ambassador to Mexico andthe United Kingdom.^[5]

Gramont is an old French noble family. His father was the son of the11th Duke of Gramont and his third wife, Maria of the PrincesRuspoli.

After his father died in a training flight, Morgan began to lead two parallel lives. He received his undergraduate degree fromYale University (where he was a member ofManuscript Society) in 1954 and anM.S. degree fromColumbia University'sGraduate School of Journalism in 1955. Although he held brief journalistic positions atThe Hollywood Reporter and theWorcester Telegram during this period, he was still a member (albeit a reluctant one) of the French nobility. From 1955 to 1957, he was conscripted into theFrench Army amid theAlgerian War, initially serving as asecond lieutenant with theSenegalese Tirailleurs of theColonial Infantry and then as a propaganda officer. He subsequently wrote in frank detail of his brutalizing experiences while on active service in thebled (Algerian countryside) and of the atrocities committed by both sides during theBattle of Algiers.^[6]

Following his military service, Morgan returned to New York as a reporter for theAssociated Press (1958–59). While serving as a reporter and correspondent for theNew York Herald Tribune from 1959 to 1964, he won thePulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, Edition Time in 1961 for what was described as "his moving account of the death ofLeonard Warren on the Metropolitan Opera stage."^[7] At the time, Morgan was still a French citizen writing under the name of "Sanche de Gramont".

In the 1970s, Morgan stopped using the byline "Sanche de Gramont". He became an American citizen in 1977, renouncing his titles of nobility. The name he adopted as a U.S. citizen, "Ted Morgan", is ananagram of "de Gramont". The new name was a conscious attempt to discard his aristocratic French past. He had settled on a "name that conformed with the language and cultural norms of American society, a name that telephone operators and desk clerks could hear without flinching" (On Becoming American, 1978). Morgan was featured in theCBS news program60 Minutes in 1978. The segment explored Morgan's reasons for embracing American culture.

Morgan wrote biographies ofWilliam S. Burroughs,Jay Lovestone,Franklin Delano Roosevelt andWinston Churchill. The last-named was a finalist for the 1983Pulitzer Prize for Biography.^[8] His 1980 biography ofW. Somerset Maugham was a 1982National Book Award finalist in its first paperback edition.^[9][a] He also wrote for newspapers and magazines.

In 1958, he married Margaret Chanler Emmet Kinnicutt, a daughter of Mrs. John Benton Prosser (née Margaret ChanlerEmmet) inMexico City.^[5]

Morgan died from complications of dementia at a nursing home in Manhattan, New York City, on December 13, 2023, at the age of 91.^[10]

• Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War. Random House Publishing Group. 2010.ISBN 9781400066643.
• My Battle of Algiers. HarperCollins. 2006.ISBN 9780060852245.
• A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone, Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster. Random House. 1999.ISBN 9780679444008.; Random House Digital, Inc., 2011,ISBN 9780307805669
• Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth Century America. Random House Digital, Inc. 2004.ISBN 9780812973020.Ted Morgan.
• A Shovel of Stars: The Making of the American West 1800 to the Present. Simon & Schuster, 1996. 1995. p. 563.ISBN 9780684814926.Ted Morgan.
• Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent Simon & Schuster, 1993,ISBN 9780671690885
• An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Barbie Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940–1945 (1990)
• Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs. W. W. Norton & Company. 2012 [1988].ISBN 9780393343243.
• FDR: A Biography, Simon & Schuster, 1985,ISBN 9780671454951
• Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry, 1874–1915, Simon & Schuster, 1982; Simon & Schuster, 1984,ISBN 9780671253042
• Rowing toward Eden, Houghton Mifflin, 1981,ISBN 9780395297148
• Maugham Simon & Schuster, 1980,ISBN 9780671240776
• On Becoming American Houghton Mifflin, 1978
• The Strong Brown God: The Story of the Niger River, Hart Davis, MacGibbon, 1975 (as Sanche de Gramont)
• Lives To Give (1971) (as Sanche de Gramont)
• Epitaph for kings Putnam, 1968 (as Sanche de Gramont)
• The French: Portrait of a people (1969) (as Sanche de Gramont)
• The Secret War: The story of international espionage since 1945 (1962) (as Sanche de Gramont)

• Appearances onC-SPAN
  • C-SPANQ&A interview with Morgan, February 21, 2010
• Ted Morgan atLibrary of Congress, with 25 library catalog records (including books by Sanche de Gramont)

EnglishWikisource has original works by or about:

Ted Morgan

• 1932 births
• 2023 deaths
• American male journalists
• Yale University alumni
• Pulitzer Prize winners for journalism
• Writers from Geneva
• French emigrants to the United States
• French military personnel of the Algerian War
• 20th-century French writers
• 21st-century French non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American historians
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• 20th-century American biographers
• 21st-century American biographers
• French male non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American male writers
• American male biographers
• American male non-fiction writers
• Deaths from dementia in New York (state)

• CS1 French-language sources (fr)
• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from December 2023
• People appearing on C-SPAN