Michael Tappenden

Michael Tappenden was born in 1942, in the middle of an air raid in Gillingham, Kent. He attended a local grammar school where he discovered a love for rugby, encountered the narrow academic traditions of the time and then stepped off to discover the real world by joining the Parachute Regiment, spending time in the magical deserts of the Middle East and an unpleasant civil war in Cyprus (for which he was given a medal. But then so was everybody else). Later, now more sated, he continued his academic studies, becoming a Principal Lecturer and Course Leader at the University for the Creative Arts after a successful career as a graphic designer. Somewhere in between he worked as a gravedigger, gardener, labourer and photographer. At the age of sixty he took up the alto sax which is played with more affection than skill and and five years later he sat down and began to write. His debut novel 'Pegasus to Paradise' looks at the impact of war on individuals and families and of the traumatic consequences and is based on the lives of his family, in particular his father Ted 'Ham and Jam' Tappenden, who landed by glider on the eve of D-Day, June 6th 1944 to capture the vital Pegasus Bridge, and somehow survived. The book received notable critical success.

His second book 'A Long Dark Rainbow' once again looked at relationships. This time against the background of ageing and mature romance and the thorny issues of elderly love and erotic intimacy (issues that do seem to provoke some embarrassment).