Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967 and grew up in Africa. The author of three novels - Zanzibar, Ladysmith and The Last King of Scotland - he works on the books pages of the Guardian. From 1993 to 1997 he was an assistant editor of the TLS. In 1998 he won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Somerset Maugham Prize.
