Ian Cotton

Ian was born in 1945, and grew up in Sutton, Surrey, son of a doctor. His was a sports-obsessed family; his grand-uncle, an Oxfordshire cricketer, taught him a unique grip for leg-spin - so he bowled out all the older boys, to his delight.

He then went to New College Oxford,where, despite being an entrance scholar, he never really connected with the analytical approach to English Literature - excepting his work with Christopher Tolkien, son of the famous JRR, whose tutorials he loved.

A career in journalism followed ( Nova, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, the London Evening Standard) where he pursued what he calls ' humorous sociology'. Thence arose two books, both with a psychological bent.

'Summer of Hope', Simon and Schuster 2002, looked at autism, while ' The Hallelujah Revolution', Little Brown 1995, explored the rise of religious fundamentalism worldwide, six years before 9/11 and a generation before Trump's presidential victory in 2016, where American evangelicals were so crucial.

Ian puts the rise of such belief systems ( as also what he feels is their first cousin, capitalist fundamentalism) down to the unprecedented stress and disorientation of modern life.

It is a subject, he says, to which he will return.