William Paterson

William Paterson

The writer grew up with his parents and sister in a rambling house on a Durban hilltop and was schooled in Natal before studying Fine Art in Durban and London. He spent most of his early working life in the South African media before settling with his wife in Ireland. They had two children but lost their daughter in a road accident. After sifting through an album of sepia photographs and a small box of old letters one evening during a thunderstorm, the author was inspired to reconstruct his reticent parents’ early days. He knew that his father had fought in German East Africa during the First World War and that his mother could never get the hang of driving a Model T Ford on their Zululand farm, but precious little else. The Snake in the Signal Box is the result, part fact, mostly fiction. It is the first in the Kirkwood trilogy. The other two (still to be uploaded) are What Happened at Yonder and Children of the Mist.