“His tales warm the heart when the nights start drawing in.” – MAIL ON SUNDAY

Me in a nutshell

I come from a family of writers, am a cousin of the poet, John Masefield, and knew him as an old man when I was a young one. Although my father and both my brothers made careers in aviation, I always spent as much time as I could outside with animals. Or indoors scribbling. As a suburban child who yearned for open country, I decided early that I’d farm and write. Preferably at once.

In fact, it took me years to do it. After school I travelled abroad, tried acting, stage management and journalism, gave radio talks, wrote two unpublishable books and spent ten years as an adman in a London office, before I could afford to buy my own small dairy farm in Sussex. By then I was married with three young children, and for six back-breaking years milked Friesian cows twice a day to pay the bills, only returning to writing when milk became unprofitable. Ideas for my first novel, Chalkhill Blue, were scrawled on the paper towels I used for drying the cows’ udders in the milking parlour – and that book launched my literary career.

Later, I worked as a care manager and teacher of young people with special needs, while continuing to write and farming livestock back at home. Retiring to cross the county border into Kent, I remain devoted to the English countryside, and am committed, as we all should be, to increasing biodiversity and preserving habitats for local wildlife. In my ninth decade I still write, still work outside, still spend as much time as I can with my Australian wife, Lee, and our big family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Still know myself to be the luckiest of men!