Laurence Blair

Laurence Blair is a writer and journalist who covers Latin America in print, radio and video for the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times and many others. His first book PATRIA: Lost Countries of South America, an alternative history of continent, was a Financial Times Best Book of 2024 and won the Royal Society of Literature's Giles St Aubyn Prize. The Telegraph gave PATRIA five stars, calling it "romantic, adventurous and thrilling." He grew up in Dorset, southwest England, and studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford before moving to South America in 2014.