Phillip Knightley is the author of ten non-fiction books. He is best known for The Second Oldest Profession and The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker. He has met nearly every spy chief on both sides in the spy Cold War and spent one week with the British traitor Kim Philby in Moscow in 1988 debriefing him just before he died. For twenty years he was a special correspondent of The Sunday Times and a member of the Insight Team. He is now representative in Europe for the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and spends most of him time writing books and articles for publications around the world.