I was brought up in a comfortable middle class environment, although I’m not entirely sure what ‘middle class’ means these days; upper, lower, in between or just plain nowhere! My father, a lawyer, ran his own family practice while my mother remained at home to keep the house and offspring in good order.
Having obtained some ‘A’ levels, I went on to do a law degree and train as a lawyer in London.
I completed my articles of clerkship etc and went on to do a short stint as a law lecturer. I eventually ended up travelling around Denmark and Israel in an attempt to ‘find myself’ and doing any particular job that came along.
I never did find myself (fast women and strong drink did however!), but soon discovered that I wasn’t bad at messing about with Legal Aid contracts in the Not For Profit Sector.
I did this for about eight years before concluding that the tedium of normality was not for me, and that maybe I could turn the odd half decent sentence or two into a full blown novel.
I have written seven novels and umpteen columns for here, there and everywhere!
JR
PS I also do some journalism and political commentary – I’m still trying to work out how all this happened. Fast women and strong drink again? Sadly no. Marriage saw to all that.
