‘Just Davide’ is the pen name for this British born writer has lived and worked as a university teacher in western PR China. The name derives from his Chinese students’ requests “what shall we call you?” and a pronunciation weakness. In primary school the author was fortunate to have the same teacher, Mrs. Shepherd, for both History and Geography. This integrated approach to learning stimulated interest in ancient history with its outstanding characters and intriguing places. This general interest has been maintained and broadened with careers in Marketing, Tourism and Education plus university degree studies in marketing, humanities, archaeology and culture. The author has enjoyed writing from a young age with contributions to school magazines and later as the national editor for an international service club magazine. He has written and published a bilingual book on tourist guiding based on his own experience in the industry and has researched, and prepared, teaching materials for use at college and university level in tourism development, western culture and English language. There have also been opportunities to travel extensively and live on the route from China. Here was planted the ‘seed’ for a series of novels about the ancient silk roads revolving around the contemporary investigations of a