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'Writing is like art or sculpture: you start with blank paper; you then have to chip and chisel to get the words, balance and subject matter right.'
Victoria Schofield talking to Dawn Newspaper, Karachi, 16 August 2000, Books and Authors

My writing career began in my third year at Oxford University when my first article on South Africa was published in Blackwood’s Magazine.  From Africa,  my attention was directed to South Asia. Benazir Bhutto was a  friend at Oxford, and when her father, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was sentenced to death for conspiracy to murder a political opponent in 1978, I put my fledging ambition to write professionally into a higher gear by travelling to Islamabad. The fruits of my endeavours were several articles in The Spectator and my first book, Bhutto: Trial and Execution. Since then, I’ve remained dedicated to understanding more about South Asian politics, both as a historian and journalist, and have travelled widely in the region.  The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 provided the inspiration for another book, Every Rock, Every Hill: The Plain Tale of the North-West Frontier and Afghanistan (1984), which  I have revised as Afghan Frontier: Feuding and Fighting in Central Asia (2003) and as Afghan Frontier: At the Crossroads of Conflict (2010). I’ve also written extensively about the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in articles and books, (Kashmir in the Crossfire (1996) and Kashmir  in Conflict (2000, 2002 and 2010).) When working freelance for the BBC World Service in London and New York during the 1980s and 1990s, I covered numerous other stories, including a feature on British sculptor, Henry Moore and a radio series on  ‘Women of the French Revolution’.

 Wavell:Soldier and Statesman (2006) combines my lifelong interest in military history with my knowledge of the South Asia. I have also written the life of military historian and royal biographer, Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, under the title Witness to History (2012). And  in 2012 I completed Volume 1 of a two volume official regimental history of The Black Watch, entitled The Highland Furies, The Black Watch 1739-1899, with a foreword by The Prince of Wales. I am now working on Volume 2 covering 1899-2006 when the Regiment was merged, becoming the The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS).