Rankin, Ian Niall: - Sir Ian Rankin's varied life has seen him follow several careers. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. After military service with the Scots Guards, he went first into advertising, before leaving that profession in the early 1960s to start his own business manufacturing seat belts. In the early 1970s, he entered the world of financial investment, becoming joint chairman of an employment agency in Holland. At the end of that decade he started an oil company, which has taken him all over the world in search of hydrocarbons. At various times he has been chairman of an optical company, a greyhound company and a textile company. He is a director of other companies. It was the geology surrounding the oil-search that led him to develop the ideas in this book. Nowadays, Ian Niall Rankin spends much of his time at his house near Toulouse, in Southern France.