DAVID PRYCE-JONES was born in Vienna in 1936. Having read history at Oxford University, he became literary editor of the Spectator, and then a roving correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. In that capacity he had had assignments in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He also covered the 1967 and 1973 wars in the Middle East and afterwards travelled widely in Arab countries. The author of ten novels, he taught creative writing for a year at the University of Iowa, and afterwards at California State College at Hayward and at the University of California at Berkeley. Among his non-fiction books are The Hungarian Revolution (1970), Unity Mitford (1972), The Closed Circle (1989) and The War That Never Was (1995). Since 1999 he has been a Senior Editor at National Review.