About Me

 I was born in Basildon, Essex, son of a council-estate Marxist and an intellectually frustrated car salesman's daughter. Educated on scholarship at a minor public school I begrudgingly received a classical education and a love of literature. I spent my twenties working and studying in Manchester before moving to London, where I met my wife and began to work seriously at writing. After completing the MA program at Goldsmiths we moved with our son into the countryside where I worked on my first novel and was lucky enough to get an agent and a publisher. Last year our daughter Xanthe was stillborn and we are trying to rebuild our lives in Norwich, where we had all planned to live while I complete the PhD program at the School of Creative Writing at UEA. Our second daughter Alice was born in June 2008 and is doing wonderfully.