David Donachie was born in Edinburgh in 1944. He has always had an abiding interest in military history, including ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the British navy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the clandestine services during the Second World War. He has more than fifty published novels to his credit, with over a million combined sales. David lives in Deal, the historic English seaport on the border of the English Channel and the North Sea.