Alexander Masters, the author of "Stuart: A Life Backwards", will give a talk at the British Council on Tues 6 March at 18.30. "Stuart", which came out in 2005 and recounts Masters' real-life friendship with an unstable and criminally-minded beggar on the streets of Cambridge, won the Guardian First Book Award. The book tells Stuart's story in reverse, through time in prison to a troubled childhood.

Masters was born in New York in 1965 and studied physics and mathematics in London and Cambridge. He has worked in hostels for the homeless for the last five years.