 Mackintosh-Smith was educated at Clifton College, a boarding independent school for boys in the suburb of Clifton in the port city of Bristol in South West England, between the years 1971-78, followed by a musical scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he read Classical Arabic.Mackintosh-Smith lives in an ancient tower house off the "Market of the Cows" in the old city of San'a, Yemen.He is the author of the "Yemen