The author was born in 1938. After surviving a traumatic Second World War, various schools and National Service in Air Traffic Control, he began banking in West Africa, returning to banking in this country several years later when Nigeria descended into civil war. It was never knowingly his intention to become an author but writing fiction in its various forms seemed to come naturally when his career in banking was abruptly terminated by a complete mental breakdown. The result of this was being prematurely retired on a modest pension in 1984. As a bachelor in his late forties, he spent several months in hospital before going to live with his widowed mother where he continued the writing he had begun in the hospital.