Loyd grew up in Churt on the Hampshire/Surrey border and attended St Edmunds School, Hindhead and Eton College. He joined the Royal Green Jackets and served with the British Army in Northern Ireland and the first Persian Gulf war.
War correspondent
On leaving the army he went to school for journalism and then went to Bosnia with a vague plan to cover the on going war. He started taking pictures but almost by accident an American reporter offered to buy some that he saw. So Loyd became a war photographer supporting himself by selling photos for 50 Deutschemarks a pop. Much later Loyd was traveling taking photos with British forces around Travnik, central Bosnia and Herzegovina about 90 km west of Sarajevo. While covering a fire fight a French correspondent who was writing for The Daily Telegraph was wounded by a claymore mine set off by the Croat HVO forces. The wounded correspondent asked Loyd to fill in until the paper could send a replacement, Loyd agreed and so started his first job as a journalist. Afterwards he was put on retainer by The Times of London and regularly sent to war zones around the world.
Among the wars he reported were the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Iraq. Loyd was noted for the risks he took in pursuing his stories. His most recent bylines (as of 15 September 2005) have been from Baghdad, where he has been out on patrol with both the American and Iraqi forces.
Author
My War Gone By, I Miss It So , is a noted book based on his experiences in Bosnia and Chechnya. The memoir is a chilling depiction of the depravity of war and adrenalin addiction Loyd experienced covering the violent dissolution of Yugloslavia in the mid-1990s. In the book Loyd staggers chapters about war in Bosnia, Chechnya, and boredom tinged with heroin addiction in London.
He published a second volume of autobiography, Another Bloody Love Letter, in 2007. It covered his experiences in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Like his famous great-grandfather
Loyd's risk-taking shows similarity to his maternal great-grandfather, Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (1880—1963). Carton De Wiart was able to live an exciting life while not in battle (Second Boer War, World War I, Somaliland Campaign, Polish-Soviet War, Polish-Ukrainian War, World War II) with a strenuous life of hunting, fishing, polo, fox hunting and pig sticking.
Though Loyd was born three years after his great-grandfather's death in 1963, the fact that he had a poor relationship with his father may well have made him model his life after De Wiart. This would account for the extreme risks Loyd takes. His great-grandfather was not only a highly decorated British soldier, he was also one of the most wounded (eleven times, which included the loss of an eye and a hand). He was admired by figures as diverse as Winston Churchill, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Marshall Józef Pi?sudski. He was also the reputed model for Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy.
Both great-grandfather and great-grandson served in the British Army, but neither had much patience for peacetime routines, and both married into the landed aristocracy. Loyd refers to Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart as his grandfather in several articles, whereas Carton de Wiart is actually his maternal great-grandfather.
Personal life
Loyd married Lady Sophia Hamilton, daughter of the 5th Duke of Abercorn in 2002 at Baronscourt, the Duke's 5,500 acre (22 km˛) ancestral estate, near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. They were divorced in 2005, on an amicable basis, occasioned by Loyd's frequent absences reporting on wars. He remarried again in 2007 and is now based in Devon with his wife, daughter and stepdaughter.
