Donald Reid is the author or co-author of four Rough Guides covering Scotland and South Africa. Born in Glasgow, he studied law in Edinburgh and ran away to sea at the end of one cricket season to avoid the threat of an office. Working in various ports around the world as a deckhand, fisherman and barnacle control consultant he sailed into Table Bay on a misty morning not long before South Africa elected Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first black president.

Realising that the wine was cheap and that it was a pretty interesting spot on the earth to be, he hung around in Cape Town for the next three years making a living as a freelance editor and writer. He began a Rough patch in 1996 when invited to travel long distances at a very hot time of year to help research the first edition of the Rough Guide to South Africa. On his return to the UK he began to travel shorter distances with a greater threat of precipitation as a co-author of the Rough Guide to Scotland and the Rough Guide to the Scottish Highlands & Islands.

Based in Edinburgh, he now drives a sensible car and writes for a number of publications on the subject of food and drink, including The List and the Sunday Herald.