He was Foreign Correspondent for The Observer (London) and Sunday Times and became a research fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His books include the best-selling The State of Africa; Diamonds Gold and War; Nelson Mandela: A Biography and Coming to Terms: South Africa’s Search for Truth, an unprecedented look at the moral and political issues that shaped the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was formed when Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa at the end of the apartheid era.