About the Author -'I was born in May 1941, just in time for the Battle of Britain. I was a twin and with no cots available, we slept in a chest of drawers. I spent my early years in a terrace house without indoor sanitation or electricity, (but it all seemed very comfortable at the time). It was not until1945 with the War ended, that I first met my father, fresh back from the North Africa Campaign; an unsettling occasion. A single-sex school left its mark; well several actually, split-lip Wednesday being our weekly boxing-lesson; but it was here that I had my first success onstage, as Shylock, which for me was indelible. The Fifties were largely taken up with delivering newspapers, though I do remember Rationing was taken off sweets (for a full twenty-four hours). The Sixties swung by, though in deepest Dorset where I began my teaching it was only the barest tremor. My headmaster claimed to have taught the Beatles, which is something I thought at the time he should have kept to himself.

Life then passed in a flash - rehearsals, tutorials, meetings, research, meetings, marriage and children, and more meetings and in the latter years a great deal of time hunched over one kind of screen or another - and then retirement, farming and a near fatal accident. I live now with my dear wife Carole in a farmhouse amidst Cumbria's beauty, and when I'm not setting the world to rights, I make furniture and toys for our ten grandchildren, (whether they like it or not).