David Leffman was born and raised in Britain, has a degree in Photography at the London College of Printing, and spent twenty years in Australia before returning to Britain, in 2009. Since 1988, he has worked as a travel writer and editor, authoring and updating guidebooks to Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Iceland for Rough Guides and Dorling Kindersley. He has also helped compile a Chinese cookbook, and written articles on subjects ranging from true crime and horse racing to Chinese culture and history. In 2016, Blacksmith Books (Hong Kong) published “The Mercenary Mandarin”, his biography of the nineteenth-century British adventurer William Mesny.