Born in 1950 in Thetford, Norfolk (birth place of Thomas Paine). My mother, a medical doctor, was an Australian. Sent from my first home - a rural paradise - to boarding schools I sought solace in Art, English Literature, History and writing short stories. Many of my school friends were Jewish. After attaining an MA in Philosophy and Political Science I worked with horses, also as an under shepherd I looked after a large flock of sheep, and farming in my own right followed. For a later post graduate course my dissertation was Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Greece: A Focus on Macedonians and the Prespa Region. The travel bug took me from Western to Eastern Europe into the Balkans ,Anatolia the Levant, Asia Minor onward to Israel and Palestine: in the autumn of 1988 I went to Gaza and met the leaders of Hamas. I wrote reports and articles for Eastern Europe Newsletter and the Turkish Daily News, besides having interviews with the BBC World Service. Latterly I worked for twenty years as an English teacher at schools and a university in Izmir (ancient Smyrna). The seeds of The Marconi Officer came to fruition over four decades.
