Andrew Lownie was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was Dunster History Prizeman and President of the Union, before taking his Masters and doctorate at Edinburgh University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and former visiting fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, he has run his own literary agency since 1988. A trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information and President of The Biographers' Club, he has written for The Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Spectator and Guardian. His previous biographies include lives of the writer John Buchan and the prize-winning Stalin's Englishman on the Cambridge spy Guy Burgess.