Nicholas Rankin worked for twenty years for the BBC World Service, winning two UN awards and becoming Chief Producer. His previous books include biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson and the war correspondent George Steer, Churchill’s Wizards, a study of camouflage, deception and black propaganda in both world wars, and Ian Fleming’s Commandos, the history of a WWII naval intelligence unit. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London and Kent.