John Edwin Belcher was born in Darlaston, a suburban area of Walsall in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall in the West Midlands of England. After an initial engineering apprenticeship, he moved into Computing and Information Technology and gained a BSc in this subject. He retired after spending the majority of his working years as a lecturer. Fuelled by what he learned in his time teaching and other life experience he turned his interests to philosophy, trying to understand what makes the human race tick.