Philip Briggs is one of the world’s most experienced and prolific guidebook writers, who has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986 – and has since expanded into Asia, South America and Europe. In 1991, he wrote the Bradt Guide to South Africa, the first guidebook published internationally after Nelson Mandela’s release. During the 1990s, he wrote a series of pioneering Bradt travel guides to destinations that were then – and some still are – otherwise practically uncharted by the travel publishing industry. These included the first dedicated guidebooks to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda, all of which are regularly updated for new editions. More recently, he authored the first dedicated English-language guidebooks to Somaliland and Suriname, and he has written or updated Bradt guides to Sri Lanka, North Macedonia and Greece: The Peloponnese. He lives in the sleepy South African village of Wilderness.