Adam Fergusson was born in Scotland in 1932. He graduated in history at Cambridge, and later became a journalist with the Glasgow Herald, the Statist, and The Times. He has been a Member of the European Parliament, a Special Adviser at the Foreign Office, a consultant on European affairs for international industry and commerce, and political advisor to Geoffrey Howe, Mrs. Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1979. He has written five books. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London.