Ben Whately

Ben Whately studied Psychology at Oxford, where he thought a lot about memory and how humans learn best.

Then he went to China to study Chinese in the hope of trying out some of those ideas. He studied in the remote (and very, very cold) northern city of Qiqihaer. As he grappled with learning the language and living in that alien world he wrote 'Black Dragon River'. It is not a travel book so much as a learning journal - learning the language; learning to live outside the country and society that he grew up in; learning to love China.

He is now COO of Memrise (www.memrise.com), creating learning tools that help millions of people to learn new languages more easily than he did.