Tom Sackville was born in 1950, brought up at Buckhurst in Sussex and partially educated at Eton and the universities of Madrid and Oxford. He worked as a banker in New York, Munich and London before entering politics, representing Bolton as a Conservative MP from 1983 to 1997. He was a government whip under Margaret Thatcher and a minister in the Department of Health and the Home Office under John Major. This is his first book.