He was brought up in New York City, Brussels and Jerusalem, and educated at Westminster School and Christ's College, Cambridge.

In 1997, Reynolds joined the BBC as a trainee with the regional news programme East Midlands Today in Nottingham.

In the following year he was posted to Santiago, Chile, to work as the BBC's South America correspondent.

[1][2] In 2001, he was transferred to Jerusalem to work as a BBC Middle East correspondent.

Reynolds spent 2009/10 as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.