Adam Brookes was born in Canada, but grew up in the UK, in a village in Oxfordshire. In the 1980s, he studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and went on to become a journalist, working briefly in magazines before landing a post as a 'copytaster' at the BBC, a job now extinct. Adam became a radio producer at the BBC World Service, and then a foreign correspondent, based first in Indonesia, then China and the United States, where he now lives. Along the way he has reported from some thirty countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and Mongolia, for BBC television and radio. His latest book is 'Fragile Cargo: The Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City', a narrtive non-fiction account of the astonishing jouner taken by China's imperial art collections during the Second World War. 'Fragile Cargo' is out in the UK, and will be published in the USA in Fenrurary 2023.