Chris Hunter is the author of Eight Lives Down, a riveting first-person account of a high-threat bomb disposal tour – the world’s most dangerous job in the world’s most dangerous place. He joined the British Army in 1989 at the age of sixteen. He was commissioned from Sandhurst at twenty-one and later qualified as a counter terrorist bomb disposal operator. He served with a number of specialist counter-terrorism units and deployed to numerous operational theatres, including the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Seconded to COBR-A as an IED and suicide terrorism expert, he played an instrumental role during the July 2005 London bombings. In early 2007 he retired as the MOD’s senior IED intelligence analyst to become a writer and Counter Improvised Explosive Device consultant. For his actions during his Iraq tour he was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal by HM Queen Elizabeth II. His citation read: ‘There can be few other individuals who have so willingly played Russian roulette with their own life to safeguard the lives of others.’