Charles Osborne was born in Brisbane in 1927. He is known internationally as an authority on opera, and has written a number of books on musical and literary subjects, among them The Complete Operas of Verdi (1969), Wagner and his World (1977) and W.H. Auden: The Life of a Poet (1980). He is addicted to crime fiction and has adapted Agatha Christie’s plays Black Coffee, The Unexpected Guest and Spider’s Web into novels.