Jackie Higgins grew up by the sea in Cornwall and has always been fascinated by the natural world. She is a television documentary director and writer, who read zoology at Oxford University, as a student of Richard Dawkins. She made wildlife films for a decade, for BBC as well as for Channel 4, National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. She then joined the BBC's science department, researching and writing, directing and producing programmes such as Tomorrow's World and Horizon. She lives in London with her family and she is the author of Sentient.