David Leffman was born and raised in the UK, took a degree in photography, spent 20 years in Australia and then returned to Britain in 2009. He first visited China in 1985 and between 1995 and 2019 authored guidebooks to China, Hong Kong, Australia, Indonesia and Iceland for Rough Guides and Dorling Kindersley.

Aside from articles on Chinese history and culture in the South China Morning Post and The Diplomat, he has also written The Mercenary Mandarin, a biography of the nineteenth-century British adventurer in China, William Mesny; Paper Horses, a collection of woodblock prints of Chinese deities; and A Murder in Yunnan, about the unresolved killing of British diplomat Augustus Margary in 1875.

Visit the author’s website at www.davidleffman.com.