Born on 11 January 1930, in the Manor House, Bletchingley, Surrey, England. He is the younger brother of Nicolas Stacey. He attended Wellesley House School (1938-43), originally at Broadstairs, Kent, England, but from September 1939 was evacuated to the Scottish Highlands.

At Eton College (1943-48) Stacey became a fourth-generation successive Stacey pupil at Eton, where he was a solo treble, the founder of Wotton’s Society in the field of philosophy, editor (with Douglas Hurd) of the weekly Eton College Chronicle, winner of the Essay Prize, and House Captain.

At Scots Guards (1948-50), in which he received his commission as Second Lieutenant, on active service in what is now known as peninsular Malaysia, spent his leave with the Temiar aborigines in the jungle, and wrote his first book (The Hostile Sun).

At Worcester College, Oxford, England (1950-51), he founded and co-organised the controversial students’ tour operation, Undergrad Tours, during the 1951 Festival of Britain year.

He was staff writer at the Lilliput Magazine (1951-2), as a colleague of Patrick Campbell and Maurice Richardson. He then became feature writer and foreign correspondent for Picture Post (1952-54). During 1954 he became a Daily Express’ ‘Express Explorer’ in which he crossed Africa overland from the Atlantic to East Africa, accompanied by Ugandan University of Cambridge graduate Erisa Kironde, and lived with the Bakonzo people of the Ruwenzori Mountains.

He was then reporter and roving correspondent for the Montreal Star (1955-56) before rejoining the Daily Express (London) in 1956-60 as foreign correspondent and diplomatic correspondent, including as America columnist in 1957. He joined The Sunday Times as roving correspondent and chief foreign correspondent (1960-65), with a worldwide brief and covering the dismantling of British Empire globally, and major conflict zones of the period, and interviewing many heads of state (including Nikita Khrushchev, Morarji Desai, Ayub Khan, Harold Macmillan, and Éamon de Valera).

He then moved to the (London) Evening Standard (1965-67) while standing for Parliament, where Stacey was a columnist and roving correspondent. Subsequent freelance assignments for contributions to The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, Daily Mail, and The Spectator etc. In all, Stacey has reported from over 120 countries, many of them several times.

From 1967-70 he was editor and creator of Correspondents World Wide, a current affairs service for schools and universities, the company being sold to Pergamon Press.

From 1969-73 he was creator and joint managing director of Tom Stacey Ltd and subsidiaries (Tom Stacey Reprints, Tom Stacey Education Ltd), which published inter alia The 20-volume ‘Peoples of the Earth’ series conceived by Stacey, and the Prospect for Man ecological series.

From 1974 to the present day, he is founder and chairman of Stacey International, which is a book publisher, originally majoring in the Middle East and Islamic world, since 2005 expanding into general book publishing and incorporating subsidiary imprints, notably Capuchin Classics.

He married Caroline Clay, in January 1952, who was to become a notable sculptor, mostly in clay for bronze, and exhibiting widely at home and abroad. The couple have had 5 children (Emma, born 1952; Tilly, born 1954; Isabella, born 1957 (married to Christopher Simon Sykes, the photographer and biographer), who as an international stage and opera designer works as Isabella Bywater (being the name of her first husband Michael Bywater); Sam, born 1966, a civil engineer and mountaineer; and Tomasina, born 1967. They have several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The couple live at Clementi House, Kensington Church Street, an early 18th century house which became Felix Mendelssohn’s music base during his early visits to London.

In October 1954, in Uganda, Stacey co-founded the Bakonzo Life History Research Society, which was to evolve as the vehicle of a recognized Kingdom of Rwenzururu 55 years later.

He contested the parliamentary seat of Hammersmith North for the Conservatives in 1964, and was defeated; and of Dover in 1966, where, again defeated, he increased the Party vote against a landslide to Labour nationally. Re-adopted for Dover, he decided to quit active politics the following year to allow for his creative life.

In 1968 he jointly led the first water-borne expedition to explore the upper reaches of the Blue Nile.

In 1974 he became a prison visitor, following his own imprisonment (as a foreign correspondent) in India in 1965. He continued in the role ever since.

In 1981 he conceived the electronic tag for (appropriate) offenders, as an alternative to imprisonment, and in 1982 formed and launched the Offender’s Tag Association as a pressure group for the adoption and exploitation of the tag (a term adopted by Stacey from the inception of the scheme). Offender tagging has subsequently become widely used in penological reform in Britain and throughout the world. Stacey remains Director of the OTA.

In 1999 he conceived and organised ‘Pilgrimage 2000’, being the nationwide Christian pilgrimage, starting at 8 sacred sites and converging upon Canterbury to herald the new Millennium.

In 2001 Stacey was the first man to ascend to the Ruwenzori glaciers following the defeat of the guerilla ADF.

In 2009 Tom Stacey was hailed by the 600,000 people of the Ruwenzori Mountains of central Africa as ‘catalytic agent’ in the recognition by the Government of Uganda of the King of their ethno-cultural entity, Rwenzururu.

Tom Stacey's novel Deadline was filmed to his own screenplay in 1989, starring John Hurt and Imogen Stubbs.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1977. His awards include the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and the (Granada) Foreign Correspondent of the Year Award (1961). Various of his novels have been Book of the Year choices by critics of national journals, including Decline (Sunday Telegraph), Tribe (TLS), and The Man Who Knew Everything (New Statesman). Most of his fiction has been separately published in the US, and some in translation. Work-in-progress includes 2 novels, and 2 further collections of long-short stories.

Profiles of Tom Stacey have been published in the Observer Magazine and elsewhere. His early fiction is assessed in Contemporary Novelists (St Martin's Press, New York, 1972).