Mr Maurice Baker

As a child I loved writing, filling home and school exercise books with stories, observations, poems and anything I found interesting. However, I rebelled against formal education at sixteen to join the university of life, travelling around the world (my aim anyway) supported by many different jobs including factory hand, builder’s labourer, gardener, car mechanic, shop assistant, office clerk, road sweeper, farm worker, and many others. I also took up guitar playing and performed my own songs in pubs and clubs.

In my mid-twenties I married and trained as a teacher, then worked at primary schools in London, Norwich and Banbury. For the past twenty years I have been in special education in Newcastle upon Tyne and, most recently, tutored young people out of school with medical or behavioural problems.

This last post brought me into contact with many challenging young people – mostly boys – who often hated English, both reading and writing. One successful approach was to encourage them to recount their own lives as if writing a novel or short story. However, not only low-achieving boys dislike English – partly because the material available is often seen as soft, boring or too literary – and I hope to try and address this problem in my stories.

Throughout my teaching career I have written and produced musicals, plays and other events for children, many of which I developed into book/CD packs for schools (www.sunnysongs.co.uk). During the 1980s I formed Sunshine Express, a music ensemble that toured schools performing original material, some of which was used by BBC Radio in school’s broadcasts. Last year I retired from teaching to concentrate on writing, mostly novels, but also songs and poetry. I also perform folk and blues songs for adults at local venues.