Les Hinton was born in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1944, the son of a British Army sergeant. For the first 15 years of his life he lived in Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Germany, Singapore, and numerous places in Britain. In 1959, his family emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, where he became a copy boy in a small evening newspaper owned by a rising young publisher, Rupert Murdoch. In the next 52 years, as Murdoch grew his empire, Hinton travelled the world, first as a correspondent, later as one of Murdoch's most senior executives. He lives with his wife Kath in New York and London. This is his first book.