Christina Lamb received a degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University. She has been a foreign correspondent for more than 20 years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa first for the Financial Times then the Sunday Times. She has received numerous awards including Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards for her coverage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1988, the Foreign Press Association award for reporting on Zimbabwean teachers forced into prostitution, the Amnesty International award for the plight of street children in Rio, and the Prix Bayeux Calvados in 2007. She has written several books including The Africa House, House of… Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe, Waiting for Allah, The Sewing Circles of Heart, and Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands.