David Randall read history at Clare College, Cambridge, and worked for more than thirty years as a writer and senior executive for The Observer, The Independent and Independent on Sunday. He has written six books, one of which has been translated into twenty-two languages, and writes a monthly column for Italian news magazine Internazionale. He has lived in the suburbs nearly all of his life, where he and his wife Pam have had four sons, who have produced four grandchildren.