Rory Cormac is a professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, specialising in intelligence and covert action. He is the author of six books including, How to Stage a Coup and Disrupt and Deny and, with Richard J. Aldrich, The Secret Royals and The Black Door. He regularly appears in the media and has co-presented three documentary programmes on Channel 4, including The Queen and the Coup. He has previously worked at the University of Warwick and King's College London. In 2018, he completed a Leverhulme International Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. Cormac is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.