Charles Richards is a co-founder of London Writing Partners who specialise in biographies. He is also a consultant and writer on the Middle East. He spent 15 years as a journalist covering the region for the FT, the BBC and the Independent. He then worked 10 years at BP as an adviser on the people and politics of the Middle East and North Africa. He is the author of The New Italians (Michael Joseph 1994) and is currently working on a book about US sanctions after 9/11. EFTA01141461