Peter Fleming was born in 1907 and educated at Eton and Oxford, where he gained a First in English Literature and was Editor of Isis. In 1935, he married Celia Johnson, the distinguished actress, and they had a son and two daughters. He worked briefly in New York before joining an expedition to look for a lost captain in Brazil. This resulted in his first book, Brazilian Adventure, which has been translated into many languages. As a Special Correspondent of The Times, Fleming travelled widely in Eastern and Central Asia. He served in the Grenadier Guards during the war and later commanded the 4th Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (T. A.). He received the O. B. E. in 1945 and was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1952. He died in August 1971. His other books, chiefly on travel and war history, include News from Tartary (1936), The Forgotten Journey (1952), The Siege at Peking (1959), Bayonets to Lhasa (1961) and The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (1963).