Roger Osborne's work has provided a range of innovative insights into our views of the past, and how they infect the present. His previous books include The Floating Egg: Episodes in the Making of Geology, The Deprat Affair: Ambition, Revenge and Deceit in French Indo-China, The Dreamer of the Calle San Salvador: Visions of Sedition and Sacrilege in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Civilization: A New History of the Western World. He lives in Scarborough.