Colin Cotterill was born in London in 1952. He trained as a teacher and worked in Israel, Australia, the US, and Japan before training teachers in Thailand and on the Burmese border. He wrote and produced a forty-programme language teaching series; English By Accident, for Thai national television and spent several years in Laos, initially with UNESCO. Colin became involved in child protection in the region and is still involved in social projects. He set up a book and scholarship programme for his beloved Laos and runs two small schools for the children of Burmese migrants near his home.