What can I tell you that you can’t already glean from these pages…..and I’m wondering how to write an “About Me” page that is interesting and honest, without sounding vain and self-obsessed…not having come up with any answer to either conundrum, I’ll just go with the flow.

Books and the reading and acquiring thereof has been a lifelong passion, ever since the days of “Janet and John” at school. The first book I remember owning was entitled “Candy the Peppermint Kitten”, a birthday present, full of bright anthropomorphic kittens, and try as I might, I’ve never found a copy of it, despite hours wasted on Ebay and Amazon. And so from then onwards, reading has been one of the few constants in my life.

​History is the other great joy for me, encompassing as it does so many other subjects, I am constantly amazed by discovering how much there is to learn from the past, living as we do in a world of transiency and inability to learn from past errors. History is interwoven with humanity’s strive to progress and improve, in ways of thinking and in the arts and has shaped the way we live today.

​You could  call me an “arty” kind of person, in so much as I draw and paint a little, badly – lacking the dedication to remain at art college back in the 70’s, when I discovered a world outside the classroom. I write about things, self evidently, having kept any number of journals over the years, but I make no literary pretence as to the quality of such – I’m not one for endless rewriting, it comes from the heart and perhaps some of the things I write are as much a desire to create something physical of my thoughts, a legible presence that might be read in years to come when I am no longer here.

​And I should mention my faith, as it is a crucial part of who I am. Christianity has given me many solutions to life’s problems over the years, but I’ve still got lots of questions, and it’s a journey with many a side tracked distraction and occasional wrong turning.

​So that’s me, in the briefest of nutshells.