Graham Hancock

Controversial bestselling author Graham Hancock has spent his life at the edge. Whether he was reporting the Somali-Ethiopian war of 1977 from the front lines and giving the London Sunday Times a radically different take on the news story of the day, or exploring the wild frontiers of Pakistan and Afghanistan for his first book, Journey Through Pakistan, published in 1982, or challenging the orthodoxy with his 1989 book Lords of Poverty that exposed the ugly underbelly of the multi-billion dollar foreign aid business.

Hancock's early years as a writer were filled with adventure and a willingness to take personal risks to bring back the real story.

In the 1980s, an encounter with a monk in the war-torn Ethiopian city of Axum lit the fuse for the radical new direction that his work would take from 1989 forward, examining the hidden mysteries of the human past. The result of that Ethiopian encounter led to deep research into Ethiopia's claim to possess the lost Ark of the Covenant and the publication in 1992 of Hancock's first book of historical investigation, The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant.

In 1995, Fingerprints of the Gods followed. Perhaps Hancock's best-known book, it presents the case for a lost advanced civilization of prehistoric antiquity. Although attacked and vilified by archaeologists and their friends in the media, Fingerprints captured the public imagination and inspired millions to think for themselves about the mysteries of the human past rather than simply and uncritically accepting what the so-called experts claim to be true. In this tradition, Hancock has gone on to publish numerous other books exploring the lost civilization mystery, of which the latest is Magicians of the Gods (2015).

His next book, America Before, will be published in 2019 and presents shattering new evidence that rips out the rug from under-established views of the prehistory of the Americas and brings his quest to rewrite history to a conclusion.

Hancock's 2005 book Supernatural explores humanity's ancient relationship with visionary plants. While researching this book, he traveled to the Amazon rainforest and encountered Ayahuasca for the first time.

It was a life-changing experience and the beginning of a long relationship with the Vine of Souls, but once again, it has made him a hate figure with the establishment as the controversy surrounding the banning of his 2013 TED talk, The War on Consciousness, has demonstrated.