David French was born in Essex in 1954 and educated at the University of York and the War Studies Department at King's College London. After briefly holding teaching posts at North London Polytechnic, the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Heriot-Watt University, he spent 27 years at University College London, before taking early retirement to become a full-time writer. The author of eight previous books, he has been the recipient of the Arthur Goodzeit Prize of the New York Military Affairs Symposium, and is a three-times winner of the Templer Medal awarded by the Society for Army Historical Research. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Association.