I was born in Glasgow, but lived in London as a child and was educated largely in Brighton. My father trained as an engineer largely in the RAF and had ended the Second World War responsible for the upkeep of B-24 Liberator bombers in British service. My mother, daughter of a headmaster, had worked for the London Midland & Scottish Railway before joining the WAAF in 1943. So it's fairly obvious where the influences on my career came from!Long before leaving school I worked for a small printing business just a few doors away from where I lived. My tasks included camera-work, platemaking, running the small offset-lithography presses, and preparing artwork. In collaboration with Gordon Hughes, a well-known dealer in bayonets and militaria, I then illustrated and partly wrote the first Primer of World Bayonets booklet while supposedly concentrating on A-Levels!I was offered a university place to study chemical engineering, but my classmates had expected me to go to art college and there had been several pointers -- largely overlooked in a classics-obsessed school -- that I had an ability to write. When I was offered a chance to enter military-orientated publishing, therefore, my life changed.I worked for Lionel Leventhal’s pioneering Arms & Armour Press until leaving, by mutual consent, as I wanted to write instead of simply helping to produce books. Since then I have completed seventy, largely on technical subjects, and translations have appeared in thirteen languages ranging from Arabic to Turkish.Who knows what will be next!Read more about this authorRead less about this author