Born in Bristol in 1900 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, Geoffrey Household worked all over the world, including Eastern Europe, the US, the Middle East and South America, as, among other things, a banker, a salesman and an encyclopedia writer. He served in British intelligence in World War 2. His other works include A Rough Shoot, Watcher in the Shadows, Rogue Justice and an autobiography, Against the Wind. He died in 1988.