Ray Brown was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, ,and educated there and at the University of Oxford and University of Reading, He spent many years as an English language teacher and consultant and during that time lived in Europe, Ghana and Mali, the Central African Republic, Algeria, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Egypt, Colombia, the former Soviet Union and China. This has given him a wide knowledge of different cultures and different value and belief systems which contributes to the authority he is able to bring to his writing.
He now lives in France and devotes his time to writing, reading and country walks.