About the Author

Born in 1965 Simon Sebag Montefiore is a biographer, novelist and journalist. He contributes to The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The New York Republicand New York Times in the USA. In the early nineties he travelled through the turbulent ex-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia and in 1996 presented a Channel 4 documentary on his 2000 mile desert quest for slavery in Mauritania. He now lives in London with his wife, Santa, nee Palmer-Tomkinson, and one child. His first biography, Prince of Princes: the Life of Potemkin was a huge success in hardback and paperback.