Timothy Boyce, Writer - Timothy J. Boyce

Timothy Boyce practiced law for many years, most recently serving as the Managing Partner of the Charlotte, NC office of Dechert LLP, a global law firm with 29 offices in 13 countries. Specializing in commercial real estate finance, Tim held leadership positions within the ABA’s Real Property Section and was elected a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Attorneys as well as the American College of Mortgage Attorneys.

Tim holds an MBA from The Wharton School of Finance, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He received a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Tim has always enjoyed writing, having published his first book while still in law school; for many years he published in a variety of legal journals. His brief introduction to the story of Nansen’s secret diary appeared in the March 2013 issue of Viking magazine. Other recent writings deal with the Nansen Passport in the Winter 2019 issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History (full text here), a review of The Winter Fortress in the January 2017 issue of The Norwegian American (full text here); Odd Nansen’s Art World in the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of the Scandinavian Review (full text here); John Steinbeck’s WWII novel, The Moon Is Down in the 2022 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Military History (full text here); and Germany’s attempt to steal Norway’s gold reserves in the Spring 2023 issue of World War II Magazine (full text here).

Excerpts from Odd Nansen’s diary have appeared in The Untne Reader and MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

A resident of Tryon, North Carolina, Tim lives with his wife Tara, two horses, two barn cats, and two dogs. He retired in 2014 to devote full time to writing and lecturing.

From Day to Day: One Man’s Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps

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“I want to thank Tim Boyce for this . . . . It would be lost to history if people like Tim Boyce did not devote the effort and time and expense–a good part of his life–to preserve the Odd Nansen story. It is a moving and gripping story. . . .”

–U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal

Hailed by The New Yorker as “among the most compelling documents to come out of the war,” From Day to Day is a World War II concentration camp diary—one of only a handful ever translated into English—secretly written by Odd Nansen, a Norwegian political prisoner. Arrested in January 1942, Nansen, son of polar explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen (Nobel Peace Prize 1922) was held captive for the duration of the war in various Nazi camps in Norway and Germany.

Nansen’s diary entries detail his palpable longing for his wife and family, his constantly frustrated hopes for release, the quiet strength and sometimes ugly prejudices of his fellow prisoners, and his horror at the especially barbaric treatment reserved for the Jews. The diary brilliantly illuminates Nansen’s daily struggle, not only to survive, but to preserve his sanity and maintain his humanity in a world engulfed by fear and hate.

First published in English in 1949, From Day to Day had been out of print for almost seventy years. The new edition contains entries and sketches never previously available in English. It also features a new introduction and extensive annotations by Timothy Boyce and a preface by Thomas Buergenthal, whose life (as a ten year-old) Nansen saved while in Sachsenhausen, later recounted in his own memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy.