Peter Smerdon

As the son of a peripatetic Government official, I spent my childhood in southern England, Singapore and Scotland, finishing my education at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. It was during my time in Scotland that I discovered a love for sailing, hill-walking and skiing. I then developed a life in the centre of England, about as far from the sea and mountains as one could get. But that's the way that life goes. Eventually, as a founder member of an offshore sailing club based in the West Midlands of England, I have been able to sail in many parts of the United Kingdom and cross-channel to the Channel Islands and northern France.

All these experiences add to the armoury that an author may deploy and readers of my short stories contained in "Sailors and Sinners" and my first novel, "Half-Life" will recognise where some of the sources have arisen. In my short stories and my novel, I have tried to write something that the reader will find exciting, thought-provoking, but also reflecting life as it is - or in the case of the novel, as it was in the 1960s, a very different England to that we experience now.