Jonathan Buckley was editorial director at Rough Guides, where he wrote several guidebooks, including for Tuscany and Umbria, Florence, and Venice. He has also contributed to The Rough Guide to Classical Music and The Rough Guide to Opera. Buckley published his first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang , in 1997, and has written several more, including the critically acclaimed Xerxes and The River Is the River. Tim Jepson is a travel writer for The Telegraph and is the coauthor of Rough Guides to Canada, the Pacific Northwest, and Tuscany and Umbria. A graduate of Oxford University, he frequently travels around the world. Mark Ellingham founded Rough Guides in 1982 and has created many of the series new ventures over the years, including The Rough Guide to the Internet , The Rough Guide to World Music , and, only a little ashamedly, The Rough Guide to the Da Vinci Code.