Robert ‘Bob’ Blair is the son of an RAF navigator who flew in the Burma Campaign and a WAAF mother who was stationed at Bletchley Park in the Second World War. He was educated at Wirral and Ellesmere Port Grammar Schools and began his career on weekly papers. He moved to the London Evening Standard before emigrating to Canada, where he worked for the Ottawa Citizen, then on to Hong Kong. After two years with the South China Morning Post Group he returned to London and spent thirty years with Mirror Group Newspapers.
Over the years he has visited more than ninety countries, including India, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Malaysia (Malaya), Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Borneo, the Philippines and Indonesia.