John Cottrell

John Cottrell was born in Weston-super-Mare, educated at Bristol Grammar School, and completed his National Service as a Centurion tank driver with the Queen's Bays in Germany. Immediately afterwads he entered journalism as a reporter with the Bristol Evening Post and was later a sports editor with Beaverbrook Newspapers in Fleet Street. His first book was The World Stood Still, a best-selling account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Then came Anatomy of an Assassination, which revealed new evidence relating to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln. Subsequently, as a full-time author,he has written biographies of Muhammad Ali, Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier, plus various sports and travel books. For Time-Life Books, he completed a book on Athens and wrote a first-hand, in-depth study of Mexico City - works which provided experiences that would be incorporated in his first novel, The Philotimo Affair.