Alec Russell is World News Editor of the Financial Times and was formerly their Johannesburg bureau chief. He has been a foreign correspondent since arriving in Romania aged 23, ten days after the 1989 Christmas Revolution, to start his career in journalism. He previously covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the end of apartheid for the Daily Telegraph, where he was Foreign Editor from 2001 to 2003. He has won several prizes and commendations in the annual British Press Awards. His writing from southern Africa earned him a prestigious award for the best published feature on Africa in 2007. He is the author of two previous books, and lives in London.