At 25 he left full-time journalism and took a degree in drama at Manchester University, where he started writing plays for stage and radio, then short stories and later novels.
In later years he made a living with journalism, radio and television drama, stage plays, and novel-writing, at first for children and later for adults too. He has also written books and essays of dramatic criticism.
His first novel, Albeson and the Germans, was published in l977, and was followed within two years by My Mate Shofiq and A Fine Boy for Killing, both of which are still in print.
His current long-term project is a series of nautical historic fictions, with which he hopes to strip the genre of some of its romantic elements (and still make a living!)
In the short term he has done a "young person's" version of Moby Dick and Dracula, some Thomas the Tank Engine and Sooty and Sweep TV scripts, and is currently working on a comic children's novel.
The writer's rationale
