I am A Mancunian, raised in a poor district of Manchester by Victorian grandparents. I worked in a garage, down the pit and on the buses before winning a trade union scholarship to Ruskin College Oxford at the age of 27. Two years later I gained an Oxford University Diploma in economics and political science by examination. I also won a State Mature Scholarship, one of two awarded that year, that enabled me to accept a place at Hull University, where I read economics. During my subsequent career in management & organisation development, I was widely published in management and academic magazines. I have been writing short stories since the mid-seventies, and have written three novels since retiring, and am working on a fourth.