Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history; among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Memorial d'Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoleon for the first of these, a Prix d'Histoire du Senat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d'Idees for the third. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest distinction in the Mauritian honours system.