Karen Armstrong spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, an experience she recollected in her bestselling autobiography, THROUGH THE NARROW GATE. She is the author of the worldwide bestseller, A HISTORY OF GOD (which has now appeared in more than thirty languages), the acclaimed HISTORY OF JERUSALEM and, most recently, BUDDHA in the Weidenfeld & Nicolson Lives series. She is a teacher at the Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism and, in 1999, she received the Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award.