Jonathan Harold Fryer (born Graham Leslie Morton; 5 June 1950 – 16 April 2021) was a British writer, broadcaster, lecturer and Liberal Democrat politician.

He left school before the end of his final year (having acquired 'A' levels in English Literature, French and Geography) and travelled overland to Vietnam, where he reported on the war for the Manchester Evening News and the Geographical Magazine.

Fryer had won an Open Exhibition award to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he started to read Geography, before switching to Oriental Studies (Chinese with Japanese).

[citation needed] Fryer joined Reuters news agency as a graduate trainee after university, serving for just over a year in London and Brussels.

On receiving his first book contract (for The Great Wall of China) he went freelance, but kept Brussels as his base for seven years, travelling widely in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

As a freelance writer on international affairs, he worked mainly for the BBC (Radio 4 and World Service), but also contributed to The Guardian, The Independent, The Economist, The Spectator, The Oldie, The Tablet, Society Today and The Liberal, among others.

For a decade, he regularly appeared on the Today Programme's 'Thought for the Day', as a Quaker[3] (having joined the Religious Society of Friends after his experiences in Vietnam), but in later years became better known for his despatches in From Our Own Correspondent.

He served as a London borough councillor (in Bromley) from 1986 to 1990, and fought five general elections: Chelsea 1983,[2] Orpington 1987, Leyton[2] 1992, his home constituency of Poplar and Limehouse in 2010, and Dagenham and Rainham in 2017.