His adventures in these distant and forgotten ends of the earth make compelling, often funny reading and tell a story most of us had thought was over: a tale of the last outposts in Britain's imperial career and those who keep the flag flying.

Simon Winchester was a geologist at Oxford and worked in Africa and on offshore oil rigs before becoming a full-time globetrotting correspondent and writer. He lives in New York and on a small farm in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and is the author of New York Times bestsellers The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World , and Krakatoa .