An Informal CV

Born:
5th February 1948 on a farm in Suffolk.

Educated:
My brother Philip and I were taught by a governess Miss Curtis until, at
the age of seven, I was sent to Hawtreys, a grim preparatory school which
is now mercifully defunct. I then attended Wellington College and, to
everyone's surprise, got into Cambridge where I read English,
emerging with a mediocre degree.

Early Career:
As a boy, I was obsessed with horses - riding them and following
their progress in the racing pages. For a while I rode as an amateur jockey
with plans of earning a living as a racing correspondent. But I discovered,
rather later than I should have, that the racing world was not for me. I then went
to Paris and worked in two bookshops. The first was a little shop called Shakespeare
& Co, which was - and is - a famous gathering-place for people who dreamed of being writers, or wanted to meet, talk to or sleep with writers. When I needed to earn some
money, I went to work in a much smarter bookshop called Galignani. I sold books
to carious famous people who were living in Paris at the time - Orson Welles,
Marlene Dietrich, Graham Greene and the Duke of Windsor. In 1972, I returned
to London and got a job in book publishing. I worked, first as a salesman, then
an editor, ending up as editorial director of a paperback imprint. I left to
become a writer full-time on 11th March 1983.

First Experience of Writing:
While in publishing, I began to write a satirical column under deep cover for
the book trade magazine Publishing News. The persona I inhabited was a
nightmarishly yobbish, snobby, randy ambitious paperback editor called
Jonty Lejeune who was fictional presence in real events (an idea stolen
from Auberon Waugh's diary in Private Eye).

Writing Career:
In my early years as a writer, I would write almost anything to remain solvent.
I did some ghosting, wrote a number of comedy books, sometimes under
pseudonym. I edited a very successful book written by Ben Elton, Rik Mayall
and Lisa Mayer based on the brilliant sitcom The Young Ones.

In the late 1980s, I began to discover what I enjoyed writing. My first
novel Fixx was published in 1989. My Ms Wiz children's series was launched
at about the same time. Soon afterwards, I began to write a cheerfully acerbic
review of book reviewers for the Sunday Times under the pseudonym of Harvey
Porlock (a bad career move, I now see).

Since 1998, I have written a twice-weekly opinion column for the Independent.
In 2006, I found myself writing a biography after the death of my friend Willie
Donaldson. It was called You Cannot Live As I Have Lived and Not End Up
Like This: The Thoroughly Disgraceful Life and Times of Willie Donaldson.

Pseudonyms:
Jonty Lejeune, Harvey Porlock, Talbot Church, 'The Man the Royals Trust'
(with Willie Donaldson), Paul Kinnell, Norah Lentil, James Riddell.

Current Employment:
I write a twice-weekly opinion column for the Independent and a regular
column for The Author. When asked, I review books and contribute to
various Radio 4 programmes. I have devised a play called Nudes and
Peacocks, based on the life and writings of Willie Donaldson, which I am
hoping to have produced. I am also writing a novel for teenagers the theme
and content of which represents a big departure for me.

Family:
My partner in life is Angela Sykes. I have two adult children Xan and Alice
from my marriage (1975 - 2001) to Caroline Soper, now one of my best
friends.

Where I Live:
Home is an ex-goose hatchery on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, which Angela
and I converted in 2002 while we lived in a tiny caravan in a nearby field.
Overseeing the building of a house was an extraordinarily exciting and satisfying experience and I wrote a fortnightly regular column about the progress of our little
adventure in the Sunday Times.

Hobbies:
Playing the guitar, particularly with my friend Derek Hewitson, with
whom I have formed the acoustic duo Something Happened;
reading; planting trees; hunting rats and rabbits with our dog Ruby.

Ambitions:
The details change, but the essential remains:
to produce better work than I've ever done before.