These days you'll find Alan Miles back in the UK, exploring the green spaces of urban Salford and Manchester. But in 1974 he arrived in Beirut on his first overseas posting, and went on to spend over 30 years in the Middle East, working as a teacher, a broadcaster, a journalist ... Lebanon, he says, is where he first learned to question the prejudices he grew up with, the same moral and ethical questions he now poses to readers in The Foreign Aide.

Alan's next book The Marathon Years (scheduled for December 2026) is also based on his personal experience, but this time it's a memoir, not a work of fiction. It's the story of a decade-long battle defying dementia after his wife Lena was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers in 2013. Read early chapters on his website, to see how love and hope can survive even in the darkest times.