Ant Middleton

Three separate military careers sit behind these two books. Ant Middleton joined 9 Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers in 1998 and served in Northern Ireland and North Macedonia, transferred to the Royal Marines in 2005 and took the King's Badge as best recruit of his commando course, then spent 2008 to 2012 in the Special Boat Service as a sniper and point man with further tours in Afghanistan. Television made him famous in 2015 as chief instructor on Channel 4's SAS: Who Dares Wins. First Man In: Leading from the Front (2018) is his autobiography reworked into leadership lessons, and it went to number one on the Sunday Times list. The Fear Bubble (2019) repeats the formula around his 2018 Everest climb, arguing that fear should be stepped into deliberately and held briefly rather than avoided. He has no psychological training and the books make no clinical claim. He was born in Portsmouth in 1980 and grew up partly in Normandy. In 2013 he was convicted following an altercation with police officers outside an Essex nightclub and served four months of a fourteen-month sentence. Channel 4 ended the relationship in March 2021, citing his personal conduct.