Andy McNab joined the infantry in 1976 as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was badged as a member of 22 SAS Regiment. He served in B Squadron 22 SAS for nine years and worked on both covert and overt special operations worldwide, including anti-terrorist and anti-drug operations in the Middle and Far East, South and Central America and Northern Ireland.

Trained as a specialist in counter terrorism, prime target elimination, demolitions, weapons and tactics, covert surveillance and information gathering in hostile environments, and VIP protection, McNab worked on co-operative operations with police forces, prison services, anti-drug forces and western backed guerrilla movements as well as on conventional special operations. In Northern Ireland he spent two years working as an undercover operator with 14th Intelligence Group, going on to become an instructor. McNab also worked as an instructor on the SAS selection and training team and instructed foreign special forces in counter terrorism, hostage rescue and survival training.

Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. As director of a Hereford based security company, McNab developed and runs a specialist training course for news crews, journalists and members of non-governmental organisations working in hostile environments (including war zones). The course is currently the only one of its kind in the world.

The books

Bravo Two Zero

Film and TV

Crisis Four

‘This writer’s greatest asset is that at the heart of his fiction is not fiction: other thriller writers do their research, but - as the vivid sequences devoted to the Syrian raid and Stone’s encounter with the terrorist unit reflect - McNab has actually been there’ Sunday Times

‘It’s everything you’d expect: pacy, gritty and full of surprises, explosions and running around airports. Top stuff’ Maxim

‘McNab is a terrific novelist. He may not be officer class, but when it comes to thrills, he’s Forsyth class’ Mail on Sunday

‘Has a flair for storytelling…McNab’s great advantage over other writers is his knowledge of what it is actually like to be in very dangerous situations' Sunday Express

Remote Control

‘In thrillers, nothing beats a good chase and this one is fast and fearsome.’ Sunday Times

‘A first rate page turner…full of inside info about covert operations’ The Times

‘Pulse racing’ Mail on Sunday

‘Proceeds with a testosterone surge’ Daily Telegraph

Bravo Two Zero

‘Without doubt the best account yet of the SAS in action... a classic war story of endurance, courage, cock-ups and technical failures. For anyone who cares to believe it was not worth fighting Saddam Hussein, this harrowing tale of institutionalised and routine abuse of human rights will make salutary reading. It is not for the squeamish; the author tells how it felt with all the graphic gusto that a soldier brings to any storytelling. The account is more powerful for its simplicity' Sunday Times

‘One of the most extraordinary examples of human courage and survival in modern warfare’ The Times

‘The night marches over the desert, the icy winds howling, snow driving down, and the lights of hostile vehicles flickering in the distance - all this comes sharply to life. So does the atmosphere of a small SAS unit: the professionalism, the exuberance, and the ultra-tight companionship (which often finds expression in volcanic exchanges of abuse). After a few pages, many readers will feel that they, too, are fighting for their lives, honorary members of this exclusive regiment' Independent

Immediate Action

‘McNab’s new memoir is the real thing... The strength of Immediate Action lies in its detail... much more than a jingoistic adventure story’ The Times

‘A joy... it gives absorbing insight into the controlled thuggery and intimate comradeship that are the hallmarks of the SAS’ Daily Telegraph

‘This book paints a richly detailed picture of life in the SAS’ Sunday Telegraph