The Author:
Christopher Robbins

Christopher Robbins became a junior jazz critic at sixteen for The Daily Telegraph, a position he held for two years. He also trained with the Stroud News & Journal. He spent two years in Copenhagen attached to the Times, during which period numerous articles were published in a wide range of English newspapers and magazines. He spent one year in Spain, during which regular features appeared in The Iberian Sun, and wrote his Christianshavn Trio of short stories.

Chris then returned to London and wrote many investigative pieces for the colour magazine of the Sunday Observer. Of these a number attracted international attention, namely a series on worldwide animal smuggling; the treatment of political prisoners in Franco's Spain; CIA involvement in political assassination (a series which exposed for the first time CIA involvement in the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, and attempts on the life of Fidel Castro - three years before these events became public knowledge through the Rockefeller Commission and subsequent reports in The New York Times).

This series of articles was expanded into his first non-fiction book, Assassin.

Chris was then appointed principal writer of Press Corps International which provided general features and politial profiles and analysis for major European newspapers and magazines including, Die Zeit and Die Welt in Germany, and Panorama in Holland.

AIR AMERICA, a non-fiction inside history of the CIA's super-secret worldwide network of aircraft, was first published in 1979 and subsequently made into a TV series and a film starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jnr.

After writing the original screenplay for Air America in Los Angeles, Chris remained in Hollywood for a number of years writing scripts: LA Shoeshine Boy, Wildfire, Lovers on the Nile, Heart's Desire, Reunion among others.

THE RAVENS, a non-fiction book on the CIA's secret, ten year war in Southeast Asia, first published in 1987.

THE TEST OF COURAGE, a biography of Michel Thomas - survivor of the concentration camps of Vichy France, veteran of the Resistance and US Thunderbird infantry division, and Nazi hunter with US Counter Intelligence - was published in 1999.

In recent years his journalism has appeared in The Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent Magazine, The Sunday Independent, The Guardian, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND, an account of Robbins' eccentric friendship with the Irish film director Brian Desmond Hurst, was published in 2004, awarded the Saga Award for Wit and Humour, and chosen as Film Book of the Year by the Cork Film Festival. Picked as a Book of the Year by The Guardian, Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Express, Observer andSunday Times.

In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared is Chris's most recent book, and will be published by Profile Books on the 24th May 2007.