Major Phil Ashby

Major Phil Ashby

About the Author

Phil Ashby was born in Scotland in 1970. He joined the Royal Marines at the age of seventeen as a Second Lieutenant, the youngest commissioned officer in HM Forces. Having completed his Arctic Warfare training, and earned his Green Beret, he was sponsored by the Marines to attend Pembroke College, Cambridge. He met his future wife, Anna, there on Valentine's Day 1991. On leaving the university, he served in Alaska, Brunei, Central America, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Northern Ireland, and Norway, and then undertook a year of specialist training as a Royal Marines Mountain Leader, the longest and hardest specialist infantry course in the British armed forces. In 1999, he was promoted to Major, the youngest person to hold that rank in the whole of the armed forces, and was posted to Sierra Leone. He was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his dramatic escape from rebel forces there. He is the author of Against All Odds and has a Master's degree in Defense Technology.