I took the rash decision to retire from my business at the age of 46 to self-build my own house on the top of the Cotswold Hills and to breed a few trout for our lakes. We've now lived in the house for well over 20 years and are still here! We're not really self-sufficient but my wife and I manage and maintain everything ourselves. I just wish I'd discovered the joy of writing sooner - it has become one of my greatest pleasures in life. After a ruptured Achilles tendon trapped me in a chair for some months, to keep my mind occupied I wrote my "Autumn Daffodils" series which is essentially a story in two halves. "Charlie's Story" ends dramatically, and "Joanna's Story" continues the roller-coaster ride to even greater heights. Since then, I have published the “None Stood Taller" trilogy including "None Stood Taller The Final Year" and "None Stood Taller The Price of Freedom". "Freedom" can be read as the conclusion of the story or can introduce the series to new readers. "Parallel Lives - a Story of the Greatest Generation" published late August 2024 has taken me two years to write. At 550 pages it seems long, but it is actually two books in one; I could find no sensible place to divide it into two separate books, as it depicts the lives of both Emma and Roger throughout WW2 from 1939 through to 1945. It immediately went to #1 in new releases. My six books are all published on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle, with hardbacks of the None Stood Taller series and of Parallel Lives. Paperbacks are also available to order from High Street bookstores. These days we let out one of our farm buildings as a holiday cottage, and we meet many interesting people from the UK and abroad. In March 2022, "None Stood Taller" was shortlisted for the UK Selfies Award, a competition for self-published authors, with the winner being announced at the annual London Book Fair. Very exciting for a relatively new author at the time! Then I was shortlisted for the I.A.N. 2022 Award for the same book, and now have just been shortlisted again for the I.A.N. 2025 Award for "Parallel Lives".