P B North

PB North was born in Stockton-on-Tees, England. He studied at the University of Cambridge where he received an MA in English. He later went on to take a post graduate degree at Edinburgh University.

He has lived most of his life in Scotland, where he has worked in various roles as a government official, writing many thousands of words for public reports. He is currently based in East Lothian where he lives with his Norwegian wife, his cat and his two cross-breed dogs

Leaving Pimlico, his first novel, draws extensively on his time spent in Norway, Scotland and the north of England. His second novel, Girl in the Picture, is partly set in the last years of British colonial rule in east Africa. When a young white liberal colonial officer comes into contact with the aspirations of an emerging African nation, the consequences are tragic. His third novel, Strange Meeting, is a tale of four people whose paths are drawn inextricably together as they follow their destinies through the violent years of World War II and the menacing Cold War years that followed. The narrative steers a course from the ivory towers of Cambridge to the battlefields of northern France; from the windswept deserts of north Africa to the frozen hillsides of German-occupied Norway; from the ruins of 1950s West Berlin to the dark world of the British intelligence services.

This Life This Death, his fourth novel, is set in spring, 1938 when the world stands on the brink of war. Daniel Jakobsen, a prominent Jewish academic, is forced to flee his country when the Nazis invade. Safe in England, bizarre circumstances lead to his recruitment into the British secret service. What follows is a story of idealism and heroism sacrificed on the altar of expediency set against the grim background of occupied Norway and dark wartime Britain. Years later a young woman begins to peel back the layers of deception in a search for her lost father and the true scale of the betrayal is revealed.