Yusuf Ansari was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh (UP), India on 26th January 1978, the Indian Republic Day. In 1985 he went to the Welham Boys Preparatory School, Dehra Dun in the Himalayan foothills and at the age of 14 was sent to the Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, England where he spent the next 5 years of his life. At the London School of Economics (LSE) he read Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management, graduating with a BSc in the subject in 2000.

Meanwhile political events back in India could not be ignored by someone as 'instinctively political' as Yusuf. The secular, liberal, social milieu in which he had been brought up convinced Yusuf that his future lay in the politics of preserving life and society as he knew it. In 1998, Yusuf joined the Indian National

Congress led by Sonia Gandhi who became its President in March of that very year. His great-grandfather had been President of the Indian National Congress in 1927; a great-grand-uncle its President in 1933. Other members of his family had been Members of Parliament and of the UP Provincial Assembly. It seemed a natural course to follow.

By 2001, Yusuf returned to New Delhi, India to the newly created Department of Policy Planning and Coordination (DEPCO) a think tank and policy group of the All India Congress Committee (AICC). In 2004 he moved back to UP as a member of the UP Congress Committee and the Chairman of its Policy Planning Cell. He lives and works in Mahmudabad, his ancestral home, in rural UP. Much of his time is spent working and coming to grips with 'the realities of grass-roots India'.

A descendant of the Ansaris of Medina who rose to prominence as the hosts (and standard-bearers and personal bodyguard).of The Prophet Muhammad in Mecca in the 7th century, Yusuf's branch of the Ansari found their way to India in 1392 and were commissioned with the task of settling the eastern provinces during the tumultuous period of the Tughlaq Sultanate. Timur's invasion of India in 1398 ended Tughlaq rule and Yusuf's ancestor, and namesake, Qazi Mohammad Yusuf Ansari Ghazi founded the family seat Yusufpur-Mohammadabad in the 1430's. Coincidentally, the Emperor Akbar's first firman as monarch (in 1559), was to provide a revenue free grant to a branch of the family in Awadh. However it was not until the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb that the family rose to any real prominence at the Mughal court.

Yusuf is particularly interested in the subjects of history and politics and is a keen student of 20th Century European history as well as medieval and military history in general. His love of political literature was inspired by Alan Clark, his MP in England with whom Yusuf kept a regular correspondence until Clark's death in 1999.

In 2005, Yusuf wrote his first book, Sonia Gandhi: Triumph of Will (Tara Press, New Delhi) a contemporary history of Indian politics and is currently writing a biography of Feroze Gandhi, husband of Indira Gandhi. He also writes regularly for magazines and newspapers on the subject of politics and rural issues.

On his latest book and subject, Akbar, the First Indian, Yusuf says, 'From whatever I have learnt about the study of history, I know that writing about individuals, and the very idea of 'Great Men' as creators of history, can be a duplicitous endeavour. My intention is neither to celebrate Akbar's virtues nor smear him with moral judgment.

The depth of his personal cultural experiences, his genealogy and family background and his understanding and experiences of India's political culture make Yusuf Ansari an ideal biographer for Akbar.