Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I sometimes feel I grew up in a car. Or an aeroplane. Earlier I suppose it was in my grandmother's house in Ranelagh Road, Dublin. But as a family we did a lot of traveling, I went to boarding school from the age of 8, and spent holidays in Southern Africa, France, and Ireland, so all in all a happy start to life (apart from school!). Little did I know that half a century later these early travels would provide the canvas upon which I was to work on books...
When did you first start writing?
I did some articles for a South African Economics Magazine around 1985, and later condensed them into a booklet entitled 'High Yield Investment Programmes - Fact or Fiction?'. However in the sense of writing books, I started when I was 65! I started life as a lawyer and became by a series of unexpected twists and turns what I suppose one would call a businessman. First an assistant in a horticulture development in Ireland, then as a manager on a Tea Estate in what was then Rhodesia, and that led to a career which left me as the boss of a multi-national multi-disciplined company based in Harare, by now Zimbabwe. We left Zimbabwe in 2001, and for a few years I was a business consultant and eventually retired. During all that I lived through Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle and learned to fly, and when I retired I started scribbling memories from which emerged my first 'book', To Fly!
Read more of this interview.