Anthony Sampson began his career as a journalist in South Africa after a brief post-war spell as a naval officer and a degree in English at Oxford University. He became editor of the new black magazine Drum in Johannesburg in 1951, where he remained for four years, establishing it as the leading black literary and political periodical in South Africa, and getting to know most of the prominent black leaders including Luthuli, Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo. He wrote his first book, Drum: An African Adventure, about his experiences. He returned to London in 1955 to join the Observer newspaper as assistant to the editor, where he remained on the staff, with frequent assignements in South Africa, until 1961 when he wrote his landmark book Anatomy of Britain, which sold 200,000 copies in hardback in the UK alone. He followed this with The New Europeans which was translated in twelve languages, and became a full-time book-writer and broadcaster, travelling widely. He then wrote successive books about multinational corporations, including The Seven Sisters and Arms Bazaar (both translated into twenty languages), Black and Gold(an account of the relations between business and apartheid) and Company Man, followed by a much-acclaimed international TV series The Midas Touch about the global marketplace. In 1985-6 he returned to South Africa to write Black and Gold: Tycoons, Revolutionaries and Apartheid. He was then banned from returning until January 1990, when his revisit coincided with Mandela’s release. Since then he has returned frequently, and is now on the international board of Independent Newspapers, the biggest newspaper group in South Africa. Anthony Sampson has been chairman of the Society of Authors and a member of the Scott Trust which owns the Guardian and the Observer. He lives in London and Wiltshire with his wife Sally, a magistrate with whom he has two children.