Born in Four Marks, a village in Hampshire, on the border of the South Downs, and raised in West London, I was educated to the age of eighteen, leaving grammar school with few qualifications and no idea what I wanted to do for a living. The next few years were spent doing a variety of jobs, blue collar, some office work, and still wondering what sort of career I wanted. Like most people in the UK, foreign holidays were only for the wealthy. It was before the advent of overseas package tours and cheap flights. Then one day, a Sunday - I remember it well, I was reading the Observer newspaper and I saw a classified ad which piqued my interest. Straightaway, I wrote the the box number, and within the following couple of weeks, I signed up for a journey which changed my life. My novel Overland to Kathmandu is a fictionalised account of the trip I made in 1966.