In the 1980s he worked for the
Press Association news agency in London and as an editor with
BBC and Independent Radio News
IRN. His first book,
The War Walk: A Journey along the Western Front (1983), was inspired by his father, Frank Jones (1890-1970), a
Great War veteran. For the book he walked along the trench lines of the
Western front, interviewing more than 30 veterans of the conflict. Among these was the German author and war hero
Ernst Jünger. His stay with Jünger inspired his second book, ''Hitler's Heralds: the story of the
Freikorps 1918-1923
(1987. Reissued in 2004 as A Brief History of the birth of the Nazis''). His third book was inspired by the discovery in 1988 of an archive of letters, papers and manuscripts of the English novelist and playwright
Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962) which were bequeathed to him by Hamilton's sister-in-law, Aileen Hamilton, and used in his biography of Hamilton,
Through a Glass Darkly (1990 : reissued 2008). In 1991 Jones moved to
Vienna,
Austria, where he joined the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (
ORF) and broadcast worldwide on
Radio Austria International. It was at this time that his only stage play
End of the Night, based on the life of French novelist
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, was produced at
Brighton's Pavilion Theatre in November 1991. Returning to England in 1995, he worked as a freelance journalist for
The Guardian and
The Spectator while writing his biography of the poet
Rupert Brooke,
Life, Death and Myth (1999). He was deputy editor of
History Today magazine (1999-2000) and reviews editor of
BBC History Magazine (2000-2003). His next book was a brief life of Britain's Fascist leader Sir
Oswald Mosley,
Mosley, published by Haus in 2004. His recent publications include a history of the
plots to assassinate Hitler,
Countdown to Valkyrie, published by Frontline Books in January 2009, and
Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London, published by Hutchinson in 2011 and released in the US in 2012 by St. Martin's Press. Jones has written for most of Britain's national newspapers, including
The Times and
The Sunday Times, the
Daily Telegraph and
Sunday Telegraph; and the
Daily Mail and
Daily Express. He reviews books regularly for
The Literary Review. He initiated and appeared in the BBC film
Journey to Hell (2003) about the war poet
Wilfred Owen, and a BBC film biography of Patrick Hamilton (2004). He has also presented a
BBC Radio Four portrait of Hamilton,
Portrait in Black (2004), and a Radio Four documentary about the SS
Lebensborn children's homes in Nazi Germany,
Fountain of Life (2006). Jones is a frequent contributor to the
World Association of International Studies (WAIS) online discussion group, created by
Ronald Hilton of
Stanford University. Jones also conducts adult and schools tours of the Western Front, "In the Footsteps of the
war poets". ==Personal life==