Philip Jowett was born in Leeds in 1961, and has been interested in military history for as long as he can remember. His first Osprey book was the ground-breaking Men-at-Arms 306: Chinese Civil War Armies 1911–49; he has since published the three-part sequence The Italian Army 1940–45 (Men-at-Arms 340, 349 and 353). He lives in North Lincolnshire, UK.