Iain Finlayson

Matthew McAllister was born in 1968, at Deal. He attended the local grammar school and took an MBA at London University. He was quickly headhunted to work for a firm of City accountants, until, in 1995, he began working for a small but prestigious Swiss bank. In 2010, he was made redundant during the global financial crisis.

Exasperated and angry at being forced into retirement in early middle age, he decided to reinvent himself as a writer, and give himself a year to write a novel. ‘Blood Month’ is that novel, inspired by the complex ethnic and class-based social life along London’s Portobello Road where he lives with a ferocious Parson Jack Russell terrier called Lugg (named after a character invented by the crime novelist Margery Allingham). He married in 1997 and divorced in 2005. There are no children by the marriage.

His recreations are squash and swimming at a local gym, and jogging along the local canal with his dog. He is a member of an exclusive Champagne Club in London and drives a Chrysler Cruiser De Luxe.