Born and educated in the UK, Piers Letcher has lived in France since 1984. He has written 17 books and more than a thousand newspaper and magazine articles, and has had hundreds of photographs published. In the latter part of his career he spent many as a senior speechwriter at the United Nations in Geneva. As a travel writer, he authored a comprehensive guide to Europe by Rail in 1985, and spent almost a year living in and travelling around the former Yugoslavia, leading to the publication of the Bradt Guide to Yugoslavia in 1989. In the early 2000s, he explored Croatia thoroughly and wrote two Bradt guides – Croatia and Dubrovnik – and with his wife Sarah co-authored another (Zagreb). Building on his intimate knowledge of France and all things French, he also wrote Bradt’s Eccentric France. He currently lives in Provence, an hour inland from Marseille.