:: Autobiography ::




After more than 15 years as a primary school teacher, I decided to swap the company of a room full of children for my PC and a vat full of coffee. For years I had taught during the day and written at night and, as my 40th year approached, thought it was about time I left school! Ironically I now spend practically as many days in schools as I did as a teacher - I manage to visit over 150 schools a year. I find it immensely rewarding to draw parallels between what children do in class and what I do now as a professional writer. As I often say to children - "We do exactly the same job, although you don't get paid for it...yet!" I am married with three children Emily, Sam and Jessica. I grew up in North London wanting to play for Arsenal, become a solo cellist and to write books - two to go then! I was brought up on a strict diet of the Marx Brothers and consequently think that life without laughter is hardly worth living.

Between university (where I studied Sociology) and teacher training college I worked in a wine-bottling factory, a DIY warehouse, as an audio-tape salesman in Stockholm, an orange-picker in Israel and an assistant cook on the night shift in a factory kitchen! (I still can't look fried egg on toast in the eye without feeling sick!)

I currently work in a converted garden shed. It amuses me to think that ideas that are hatched in a room that's barely big enough to sit in, eventually make their way into the minds of so many children throughout the country.