About the Author

Dr Peter D. Sharrock is Senior Teaching Fellow in the History of Art and Archaeology at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He experienced the American war in Indochina for four years as the Reuters correspondent and discovered how, as the French said, Indochina 'attaches to the skin'. The war put the vast Angkor temple complex out of reach and this was prolonged as Cambodia closed on itself and underwent the agony inflicted by Pol Pot and the Khmers Rouges. His doctorate and subsequent publications are on a new interpretation of the esoteric Buddhism and imperial politics of the greatest king of ancient Cambodia, Jayavarman VII, as expressed through the art and architecture of the 'Bayon style' named after the Bayon temple in Angkor. His current research explores Jayavarman's empire beyond Angkor - including his second greatest temple complex of Banteay Chhmar, now at last being restored after slowly crumbling for eight centuries in remote forest near the modern Thai border. Outside ancient Cambodia he studies the spread of tantric or esoteric Buddhism that developed in the great eighth-century monasteries of the Ganges valley and was diffused in many different art and architectural forms through much of Asia.