I write with three purposes in mind: to educate, engage and enchant. Life is too short to spend time with books that don’t make our brains dance a little. I have spent decades travelling the world and poking my nose into other people's lives, so it's perhaps unsurprising that the majority of my books are about adventures in obscure places. Oxford educated, I see research as a sport and writing as an opportunity to share my discoveries. It is perhaps inevitable that I weave in my experiences of a world that has spent years revealing its extraordinary beauty and possibilities.