Alistair Horne was educated at Le Rosey, Switzerland, and Jesus College, Cambridge. He ended his war service with the rank of Captain in the Coldstream Guards attached to MI5 in the Middle East. From 1952 to 1955 he worked as a foreign correspondent for the DAILY TELEGRAPH. In 1969 he founded the Alistair Horne research fellowship in modern history, St Antony's, Oxford. His numerous books on history and politics have been translated into over ten languages, he was awarded the HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE (for THE PRICE OF GLORY) and the WOLFSON PRIZE (for A SAVAGE WAR OF PEACE). In 1992 he was awarded the CBE; in 1993 he received the French Legion d'Honneur for his work on French history and a Litt.D. from Cambridge University. He was knighted in 2003 for services to Franco-British relations.

This wonderfully entertaining journey takes us from Alistair Horne's childhood as a wartime evacuee in America to his career as a highly successful historian and biographer, via a stint as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. We travel with him from Germany to America, from Canada to France, from Latin America to the Middle East.

A consummate biographer, the pages of Horne's 'Literary Vagabondage' abound with vivid character sketches of the friends and foes that have shaped his life.