Chris Ryan was born in 1961 in a village near Newcastle. In 1984 he joined the SAS.
Less than a week after the outbreak of the last Gulf War, Ryan and 7 fellow SAS soldiers were dropped by helicopter deep in the Iraqi desert. Their mission was to locate and destroy Saddam Hussein's mobile Scud missile launches but it ended in catastrophic failure with three men dead and four captured and tortured by the Iraqis.
Chris Ryan was the one who got away. For 7 days he avoided capture, covering 188 miles of desert in subzero temperatures with no food and little water. His remarkable escape was the longest in the history of the Regiment and earned him a Military Medal. Ryan wrote about his experiences in the bestseller, The One That Got Away.
During his ten years in the SAS, Ryan was involved in overt and covert operations. His missions included training Presidential bodyguards in Columbia, defending the British Embassy in Zaire from rioting mobs, and in Northern Ireland he was the Sniper team commander of the anti-terrorist unit. During Ryan's last two years in the Regiment he selected and trained potential SAS recruits, he left the SAS in 1994.
He is now the author of many bestselling thrillers for adults, as well as the Alpha Force and Code Red series for younger readers. He has presented a number of TV programmes, including Hunting Chris Ryan, Pushed to the Limit (Toughest Families), Terror Alert (Sky TV, 2004) and Chris Ryan's Elite World Cops.