He is known for biographies of Napoleon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Carl Jung, Richard Francis Burton and Henry Morton Stanley.
McLynn was educated at the John Fisher School Purley, and won an Open Scholarship in Classics to Wadham College, Oxford.
McLynn explained his choice by stating that "history and literature were my first loves, and I would always read them in future life, but I doubted that I would ever pick up a book on economics or philosophy again".
Prior to and during his career as a writer, McLynn worked in academic positions in the UK and USA.
McLynn was shortlisted for the NCR Book Award for Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography *Published in the USA as Richard and John: Kings at War (2007), Da Capo Press