Jon Courtenay Grimwood was born in Malta, where he was christened in the upturned bell of his uncle's destroyer, and, as he was brought up in a Service family, grew up variously in Britain, Scandinavia and all over the Far East.

He says: "I got lost in Karachi, visited an opium den, and went to see the rock paintings in a Buddhist cave. I visited Hindu temples, ate food cooked on oildrums by the road side and waited for a week to see if my father would survive a scorpion bite... I doubt if that kind of childhood still exist".

He currently lives in Winchester, but spends as much time as he can in North Africa, Paris and New York. When he is not writing books, he acts as the Guardian’s science fiction reviewer and writes for a number of other newspapers and magazines.

As a science fiction writer, Jon has produced seven novels so far, including ReMix (1999), Red Robe (2000), Effendi (2002), and Felaheen (2003). His later, Ashraf Bey novels have been described as "Raymond Chandler for the 21st Century," while his earlier novels, described as "William Gibson meets Quentin Tarantino", specialised in a frenetically-paced hard-edged cyberpunk style.

These are not Jon's only forays into writing, however, as he also wrote the best-selling Thatcher Bedside Book, as well as its follow-ups, The Royal Bedside Book and The Election Bedside Book, which managed to sell well over 200,000 copies between them. .