David McDowall has lived and worked in various parts of the world: in Hong Kong, Iraq, the Lebanon and Austria, serving in HM Forces, the British Council and the United Nations. He has traveled widely in the Near East and has written extensively on both British and Middle Eastern history, in particular on the Palestine Question, the Lebanese conflict, and the Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. He now writes walkers' guides to some of Britain's historic landscapes. He is married to the writer Elizabeth Laird.