Andrew Beattie has been writing and travelling ever since he left Oxford University with a degree in Geography. He is also the author of a cultural-historical guide to the Alps published by Signal Books. Away from the Alps, his writing has taken him to many other parts of Europe, as well as the Middle East; he has worked on books in the Rough Guides series on Switzerland, Germany, and Syria, while other books for Signal include cultural-historical guides to Prague, Cairo, the River Danube, and the Scottish Highlands.