Trust me, I'm a Sagittarian (a brief biography)
I grew up in Langwith, a pit village in north-east Derbyshire, in a household with few books and a lot of people. The nearest library, in Shirebrook, became a home from home, and fed my hunger for reading across the spectrum. I now live in Oxford, where I share a young dog and a lovely family with artist Imogen Rigden.
In my youth I worked on hill farms near Tideswell in the White Peak, Derbyshire, and at Dorfgemeinschaft Lehenhof, a Camphill village in Baden-Württemburg.
At uni in Durham I read philosophy, psychology & anthropology; discovered environmentalism; wrote poems under 5 or 6 pseudonyms, trying and once almost succeeding in taking over a whole issue of the uni lit mag, Makaris; and played psychedelic music in Ahimsa. After uni I worked in software: on the Concorde at BAe, early on-line systems and very early R&D in AI at Telecomputing, network planning for National Express, and library & resource management systems with Softlink.
Understanding learning became a passion as my daughter hit education, and I switched from software to educational research and teaching via mid-life crises and MSc, PhD and PGCE. On the way I helped set up the first community-owned wind farm in southern England (Westmill).
Since the 1970s I’ve been a member of Greenpeace and the Ecology/Green Party, on and off; an organic gardening re-wilding clean water campaigner; and a hands-on volunteer with the Berks Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust and The Friends of Burgess Field.
I write free-ranging fiction that draws on all that, and do my best for wild things and other disadvantaged beings at every opportunity.
In 2024 I co-founded OxIA (Oxford Independent Authors) with fellow crime writer Colin Wade, a mutual support collective of local indie authors focused on publication and promotion.
I strongly believe that good writing demands continual learning and development and refreshment of the wirter’s practice. To that end I take part in two on-going writing groups: one led by Elizabeth Garner, who taught my 2017-18 Writing Fiction course in Oxford; and another, a zoom group, whose formation was facilitated by Cathy Galvin and which is run on a collaborative basis by its four members. Both of these groups are useful and rewarding in all sorts of ways.
Writers also read. I rarely have fewer than three books in my ‘current reads’ pile - on 07.08.26 those were Death of an Englishman by Anna Beer; Is a River Alive by Robert Macfarlane; and Ethnology by Cathy Galvin. 16.09.26: Eve Bites Back by Anna Beer; A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean; The Quigleys in a Spin by Simon Mason; and Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim by David Sedaris. 15.10.26: Murder at the Book Club by Colin Wade; The Facts of Life by R.D.Laing; Lady Audley’s Secret by M.E.Braddon; and The Shell Channel Pilot by Rachael Sprot. I’m going to keep doing this until someone says ‘Stop’.
While writing The Price of Dormice I photographed the ‘read and liked’ pile from time to time. Here are some examples of the rain-spattered cultural weather in which I was writing.