John Pemble graduated from Clare College Cambridge and then carried out doctoral and postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, and the Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris. He is the author of a wide range of books, articles and reviews, and has taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the University of Leicester, and the University of Bristol, where he was Reader in History and is currently Senior Research Fellow. His work has been translated into Italian, Japanese, and Hebrew, and in 1987 he was joint-winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History.
He lives in Clifton, Bristol. "Britain's Gurkha War" is John's first book with Frontline Books.