Joseph McAleer attended St John's College, Oxford as a graduate student, completing his D.Phil. in Modern History in 1989. His previous publications include Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain, 1914-1950 (OUP, 1992), which received the inaugural Longmans/History Today Book of the Year Award, and Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (OUP, 1999). He has held a variety of interesting jobs, including university professor, Scottish castle administrator, corporate PR head, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church, editor,webmaster, and national film critic.