Chris Kellett

I grew up in a middle class suburb of Bradford in the North of England called Horton Bank Top. It was on the outermost fringe of the city and was surrounded by open countryside and small farms. In the school holidays my older brother, our friends and I used to spend entire days roaming for miles round the woods and fields. It was pretty idyllic. My writing was influenced by the fact our house was full of books. My dad was an avid if eclectic reader of both factual works and fiction. We were all members of our local lending library. When I was small both my parents read to me, as I grew up I was encouraged to read pretty much whatever I could lay my hands on. To give some idea of what I read I'll just say it ran from DH Lawrence to Jane Austen and from Dickens to Tolkien. Another influence from my dad was his time in the army during WW2. He was a German speaker and toward the end of the war was a member of a unit charged with hunting down wanted Nazis. He told me about his experiences while I was in my teens and it fired my imagination for all things to do with military intelligence. It also stirred my interest in military history prompting me to read widely and deeply into the history and conduct of both world wars.

I have to own up to a guilty secret. When I was at grammar school I'm afraid science and I just didn't get along. I invariably came top, or near the top, of my class in the arts and humanities subjects but near the bottom in science. I realized I had classmates who suffered from the opposite syndrome. It seemed like a fine idea to reach a deal with three classmates to cover my maths, physics and chemistry homework. I wrote all their English essays, they each covered one of the sciences for me. It worked brilliantly and all went well for nearly 3 months until a fateful English lesson. My English teacher, the brilliant George Barrett to whom I owe a huge debt, handed back the exercise books of everyone except my co-conspirators and me. He dropped all four books on my desk and said "four excellent essays Kellett..........see me after class." This was my first job as a freelance writer; just a pity it didn't last longer! George did ease the pain by telling me my undoing was down to the fact I had a recognizable writing style which was unusual for one of my age.