Jon Halliday

{{short description|Irish historian (born 1939)}}

{{use dmy dates|date=January 2015}}

File:Carrillo - Chang - Halliday 2.jpg in 2009]]

Jon Halliday (born 28 June 1939) is an Irish historian specialising in modern Asia. He was formerly a senior visiting research fellow at King's College London. He was educated at University of Oxford and has been married to Jung Chang since 1991. Halliday is the older brother of the late Irish International relations academic and writer Fred Halliday.[http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/cold_war_2753.jsp A harvest of sorrow]

Halliday has written or edited eight books, including a long interview with the U.S. film-maker Douglas Sirk. In addition, he and his wife, Jung Chang, with whom he lives in Notting Hill, West London, researched and wrote a biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: the Unknown Story. The book was highly praised in the popular press, and also elicited some controversy.{{cite web|date=2005-12-04|title=Storm rages over bestselling book on monster Mao|url=http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/04/china.books|access-date=2021-01-14|website=the Guardian|language=en}}Was Mao Really a Monster: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday's "Mao: The Unknown Story" (London, New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 9, 11. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that while few commentators disputed it, "some of the world's most eminent scholars of modern Chinese history" had referred to the book as "a gross distortion of the records."{{cite web|url=http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/a-swans-little-book-of-ire/2005/10/07/1128563003642.html|title=A swan's little book of ire|publisher=The Sydney Morning Herald|date=8 October 2005|access-date=8 December 2007}} Some scholars offered measured praise of the range of scholarship,{{cite journal|title=Mao and The Da Vinci Code: conspiracy, narrative and history|journal=The Pacific Review|date=September 2006|first=David S.G.|last=Goodman|volume=19|issue=3|pages=361, 362, 363, 375, 376, 380, 381|doi=10.1080/09512740600875135|s2cid=144521610}}{{cite journal|title=The Portrayal of Opportunism, Betrayal, and Manipulation in Mao's Rise to Power|journal=The China Journal|date=January 2006|first=Gregor|last=Benton|author2=Steven Tsang|issue=55|pages=96, 109|doi=10.2307/20066121|jstor=20066121|s2cid=144181404}}{{cite journal|title=The New Number One Counter-Revolutionary Inside the Party: Academic Biography as Mass Criticism|journal=The China Journal|date=January 2006|first=Timothy|last=Cheek|issue=55|pages=110, 118}} but more prevalent criticism on factual accuracy, methodology, and use of sources.Pye, L. P. [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2005-11-01/mao-unknown-story Mao: The Unknown Story], Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005,{{cite book |title= The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution |last= Gao, Mobo |year= 2008 |publisher= Pluto Press |location=London |isbn= 978-0-7453-2780-8| page=11}}Li, J. (2010), "Review of Was Mao Really a Monster? The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday's Mao: The Unknown Story, by G. Benton & L. Chun" in China Review International, 17(4), 408–412 Historian Rebecca Karl summarized its negative reception, writing, "According to many reviewers of Mao: the Unknown Story, the story told therein is unknown because Chang and Halliday substantially fabricated it or exaggerated it into existence."{{Cite book |last=Karl |first=Rebecca E. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/503828045 |title=Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world : a concise history |date=2010 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=978-0-8223-4780-4 |location=Durham [NC] |pages=ix |oclc=503828045}}