Atlas of Geographical Curiosities

Vitali Vitaliev is a UK-based multi-award-winning author, col- umnist, editor and broadcaster. Starting his career in the former USSR, where he became known as the country's first investiga- tive journalist, he was forced to defect in January 1990. Having worked and lived in Australia, England, Scotland and Ireland, and having travelled in over 70 countries, Vitali is the author of 15 books translated into many languages. He has worked as a journalist for some of the major English-language newspapers, and is now a Royal Literary Fund Fellow as well as a Writing Fellow and Teaching Associate at the University of Cambridge, but also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain. Vitali lives with his partner Christine and Tashi, a furry Tibetan Terrier, in a small English town not far from London.