John Kampfner spent a decade as a newspaper foreign correspondent, as bureau chief in East Berlin and Moscow, in the late 80s and early 90s during the heady events of the collapse of Communism.

On return to London, he joined the masonic world of the political lobby at Westminster, first as Chief Political Correspondent of the Financial Times and then as political correspondent and analyst for the BBC Today programme.

In 2002 he joined the New Statesman as its Political Editor, a job he combines with television and radio documentaries for the BBC and book writing.

His two-part series on the Middle East conflict, THE UGLY WAR, won him the Foreign Press Association's award of Journalist of the Year and Film of the Year in 2002.

BLAIR'S WARS, published by Simon and Schuster in September 2003, is his
third book - his first under the auspices of David Higham Associates. His
first venture into book writing was INSIDE YELTSIN'S RUSSIA, published by
Cassell in 1994. That was followed by the critically-acclaimed ROBIN COOK - A BIOGRAPHY in 1998.

He and his journalist wife Lucy Ash have two daughters and live in London.

Tony Blair has committed British forces to action five times in six years. No British Prime Minister and few world leaders have come close in contemporary history. What is it about this deeply Christian man that has given him such a taste for war?

In BLAIR'S WARS, award-winning journalist John Kampfner gives the inside story of a man who came to office with no experience of -- and virtually no interest in -- foreign affairs but who quickly moulded himself into a man on a mission: to punish dictators and spread democracy across the globe. To do that he fell back on the basic tenets of British diplomacy, a yearning for friendship with the United States and a reliance on the armed forces, while proclaiming his vision in the more modern guise of liberal intervention.

This mission has taken Blair from the first air strikes against Iraq in 1998, at the time of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, to the Kosovo conflict of 1999; from the deployment of troops in Sierra Leone to George W. Bush’s attack on the Taleban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after September 11 -- and then on to the final and decisive war against Saddam Hussein.

Through conversations with the main players across governments in London, Washington, New York and European capitals, BLAIR'S WARS details the processes by which the Prime Minister has prosecuted these campaigns -- and why. It reveals in riveting fashion the failure of diplomacy that preceded the showdown with Saddam. It shows how Blair decided from the beginning of Bush’s presidency that he would allow nothing to get in the way of their close alliance; how he reconciled himself to war on Iraq at a very early stage; how he willed the intelligence material to conform to his plans; and how he dismissed the warnings of his diplomats that his approach would alienate him from countries he had so assiduously courted.

This is the story of a man who had convinced himself that his powers of persuasion could overcome all problems and defy all logic -- only to see those powers disappear.