Nicholas Best grew up in Kenya, of Anglo-Irish origin, and was educated there, in England, and at Trinity College, Dublin. He served a spell in Britain's Grenadier Guards, during which he was airlifted to Belize to prevent its invasion by Guatemalan tanks - an experience that gave him his first short story (in Penthouse) and a satirical novel Where were you at Waterloo? Thereafter he worked in London as a financial journalist before becoming a full time writer. He is the author of Happy Valley: the story of the English in Kenya, Tennis and the Masai (a comic novel later serialised on BBC Radio 4), and more than a dozen history books, including the critically acclaimed Trafalgar and The Greatest Day in History: How the Great War Really Ended. His work has been translated into several foreign languages. He has written also for BBC radio, the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Times and the Times Literary Supplement etc. He lives in Cambridge, England.