John Bryant

John Bryant (born 1943) is a British journalist with interests in Marathons. He was Editor of The Daily Telegraph from 2005 to 2007, and has also served as Editor of The European, Editor of The Sunday Correspondent, Deputy Editor of The Times and Executive Editor of the Daily Mail. He helped establish the London Marathon, with Chris Brasher.

Bryant was born in 1943 and grew up in the village of Haselbury Plunknett in Somerset. He was an Oxford Blue.

Bryant has been described as a reluctant interviewee, and quietly spoken, by those around him. He resides in Kingston upon Thames.

Bryant is a former county running champion and since then has entered coaching – he coached, among others, Olympic athlete Zola Budd, accompanying her to the 1984 Olympics. In the 1950s, he was closely involved with major players in achieving the four-minute mile.

Bryant was a long-time captain of the world's oldest cross-country running club, the Thames Hare and Hounds. He completed his 24th marathon in April 2016, and thanked his team at a reception held near Tower Bridge at the end of the run.

Bryant was Executive Editor of the Daily Mail in the 1980s, before joining The Times as their Managing Editor in 1986, where he wrote a regular column on sport. He was promoted to Deputy Editor, a role he returned to after editing The Sunday Correspondent and The European. On 18 November 2005, Martin Newland resigned as Editor of The Daily Telegraph, and the Telegraph Media Group immediately hired Bryant. His tenure as the paper's editor came with an era of unexpected turbulence, where journalists were at the forefront of a number of redundancies and resignations, including 54 editorial redundancies at The Telegraph in 2006. At the same time, it was reported that Bryant was in a 'power struggle' with the then Sunday Telegraph editor Sarah Sands. It was announced that Bryant was leaving The Telegraph in late 2006, and he said he had had "a great time" among the paper's journalists and writers. In October 2006, William Lewis took over Bryant's role unofficially until Bryant's official leaving the editorship the following year. Since his leaving The Daily Telegraph, Bryant has written a number of books and articles with sporting and marathon backgrounds, including a piece in The Guardian about Roger Bannister's four-minute mile in 1954.