Simon Alexander Collier is a former British diplomat and the author of "Milligan and the Samurai Rebels," a humorous, historical novel set in Japan in the 1860s. Simon was born in 1970 in Oxford, England. On a whim and the recommendation of a friend, after university he went to Osaka to teach English, thus beginning a lifelong interest in and affection for things Japanese. He returned to the UK for further study, after which he became a civil servant. In 1999 he was sent by the British government as a diplomat to Japan. Although Simon has now left government service, he has lived in Tokyo almo...