Duff Hart-Davis has written and edited fifty books on a wide variety of subjects, including eight adventure novels and biographies of Peter Fleming, the traveller and author, J.J.Audubon, the American bird artist, and most recently Philip de László, the portrait painter. A deep interest in natural history led to Monarchs of the Glen, a history of the Highland deer forests, and to the much-praised illustrated encyclopaedia Fauna Britannica. He worked on the Sunday Telegraph as Literary Editor and feature writer, reporting from many parts of the world, and from 1986 to 2001 he contributed the weekly Country Matters column on rural affairs to the Independent. Together with his wife Phyllida he now lives in a 17th-century farmhouse on the Cotswold escarpment.