Charles K. Kliment was born in 1932 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He studied polymer chemistry at the Technical University in Prague, and specialised in the research of hydrogels for medical, cosmetic and industrial uses. In 1969 he emigrated with his family to USA. He retired in 2001 and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Already during the Second World War he began his interest in military history and combat weapons. During these years, he assembled a large collection of war-time photographs, documents and memoirs. He specialises in AFVs, especially in the history of tanks, developed in the pre-war Czechoslovakia and their use in Second World War. This was a topic of his first published book, Czechoslovak Armoured Vehicles 1918-1945, published by Bellona Press, UK (1978). Besides that, he has authored eight further books, translated two others, and published many articles in historical and modelling magazines, such as Military History, AFV News, Airfix Magazine. He also co-operates with various military museums and armoured vehicles restorers.
