Ian Crofton now lives in London, but was born and raised in Edinburgh. He has written many works of popular history, including History without the Boring Bits (now published in many different languages around the world, from Japanese to Estonian) and A Curious History of Food and Drink. For Birlinn he has also written A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable. In 2013 he made a journey on foot along the Anglo-Scottish frontier, and the resulting book, Walking the Border, was selected by the Daily Telegraph as one of its travel books of 2014.