David McCullough obituary

David McCullough pictured with art by George Catlin, one of the artists featured in his book The Greater Journey, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, 2011. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

David McCullough, who has died aged 89, was the US’s most popular historian. His books were bestsellers; his biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams both won Pulitzer prizes, and were taken up for TV by HBO. Two more of his books, on the creation of the Panama Canal and about Theodore Roosevelt’s early years, won the US National Book award.

But McCullough was perhaps best known for his voice, as the narrator of documentaries, most notably Ken Burns’ epic series The Civil War (1990) and the Disney film Seabiscuit (2003), about the 1930s sensation racehorse, and as host of the long-running PBS series American Experience.