Loyn has frequently sought to report on the motivation of insurgent groups, including interviews with Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, Maoist Naxalite rebels in India, Kashmiri separatists, and the Kosovo Liberation Army.
He reported extensively from Eastern Europe in the early 1980s, witnessing the birth of the Solidarity Union in Poland and interviewing Lech Wałęsa.
In 1989 Loyn reported on the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolution in Romania.
But Loyn has been an opponent of a school of journalism known as 'Peace News', and debated with its supporters both in public and in a widely cited academic discourse.
He is on the Advisory Council of the Mcdonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life in Oxford, and is a founder member of London's Frontline Club.
Butcher and Bolt was widely seen as providing insight into why the Afghan war proved a far harder fight than it had initially looked in 2001.