A man who has endeavoured to live life to the full, who attended the funerals of King George V, Edward VIII, Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery (upon whose staff from Alamein to Tunis his father served), The Queen Mother and Princess Di.
Writing was a side-line, commencing at the age of twenty five, having been grounded in the Second World War in the exotic world of cosmetics, perfumery and being blown-up by one of Hitler’s V.2 rockets, just prior to its conclusion.
Conscripted into the army, commissioned into an infantry regiment, he was shortly seeing action in the Malayan jungle against Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Chinese guerrillas and was once enlivened by being shot at three times, within 24 hours, at ten paces range. Unfortunately for some he survived.
Having turned his back on adventurous military activities in Special Forces he studied equally bloody activities at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Shakespeare) and thereafter turned to broadcast television in a not so peaceful occupation, as a senior executive.
To provide educational fees and other material delights he turned to writing biographies of wonderful people whose stories needed to be told. After worldwide travel and eleven years spent at sea in his motor-sailor, he still survives although some might wish that he had not.
As ‘they’ say, the ‘pen can be mightier than the sword’!