R.J. Berney

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.‎