Nicholas Best grew up in Kenya and was educated there, in England and at Trinity College, Dublin. He served in the Grenadier Guards and worked as a journalist in London before becoming a full time author. His first novel ('As a satire on military bigotry and shambling officialdom, Where were you at Waterloo? is in places as sharp as Waugh and sometimes better' - Times Literary Supplement) was written at Harvard. His second, Tennis and the Masai ('The funniest book of the year - Daily Telegraph) was serialized on BBC Radio 4. He has since written many other books, including Happy Valley: the Story of the English in Kenya, The Greatest Day in History, about the Armistice of 1918, and Five Days that shocked the World, about the end of the Second World War. Best was the Financial Times' fiction critic for ten years. In 2010, he was long-listed for the Sunday Times-EFG Bank award of £30,000, the biggest short story prize in the world. He lives in Cambridge. For more information, visit www.nicholasbest.co.uk