James McConnachie was born and brought up in south London, and studied English literature at Jesus College, Oxford. Touring the Loire in the back seat of a Citroën DS inspired an early love of travel, but his first trip for Rough Guides was to Spain, in 1998. James then began researching for the historian Theodore Zeldin, but found time to work on the Rough Guides to Venice, Florence and Italy. This led to presenting a five-part BBC TV series on Italian language and culture, Italy Inside Out – which is still regularly screened to students stoned enough to be awake at 5am.

In early 2002, James had the chance to update David Reed’s Rough Guide to Nepal. As a student, he had spent nine months teaching in a Himalayan village four days’ walk from a road, but travelling all over the country, in the middle of a Maoist insurrection, really put his knowledge of Nepali culture and language to the test – and never more urgently than when persuading a local Maoist that he was not in fact a CIA spy.

After Nepal, James returned to his Francophile roots. He was commissioned to rewrite the Rough Guide to Paris, alongside Ruth Blackmore, and, in 2003, he headed back to the Loire valley to write his own, new guidebook. Many, many château visits later, the Rough Guide to the Loire appeared. Meanwhile, travel-related TV and radio appearances for the BBC and other channels led to more presenting work, including frequent stints on the sofa with Richard and Judy.

In recent years, James has written the “Locations” section of the bestselling Rough Guide to the Da Vinci Code and co-authored the Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories with Robin Tudge, which exposes the truth behind over a hundred conspiracy canards, and explores whether there is a conspiracist version of history. He has also taken photographs for Rough Guides in Rome, Florence, Venice and Maui (Hawaii).

James's latest book, The Book of Love: A Biography of the Kamasutra, will be published in summer 2007 by Atlantic Books. It tells the story of India's most extraordinary ancient text, and reveals how it was discovered in the nineteenth century and smuggled into the West by, among others, the explorer Richard Burton. He continues to do television work, his most recent project being Tales from Paris, a travel show co-presented with Kirsty Wark, which was screened on BBC2 in August 2006.

James currently lives in west London. He is passionate about music, literature, languages, walking and wildlife, and is a supporter of Amnesty International.