A graduate of the University of Leeds, Michael Asher has served in the Parachute Regiment and in the SAS. He is one of the world's top desert explorers having covered almost 20,000 miles on foot and with camels and spent three years living with a traditional Bedouin tribe in the Sudan. A fluent Arabic speaker, he has won two awards for desert exploration, from the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. He now runs Lost Oasis Expeditions, offering small-scale, expert-led, real adventure expeditions in remote desert locations.

His thirteen books, including travel works, novels and biographies of T E Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger, have been translated into ten languages. In 1996 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has presented several documentaries for Channel 4 including, most recently, the controversial THE REAL BRAVO TWO ZERO about the ill-fated SAS operation in Iraq. His book of the same name was a best-seller.