Despite being born on an RAF base in East Anglia I have always thought of myself as Welsh. Both my parents came from Glamorgan so that was where we went when my father left the RAF when I was four and where I grew up and went to school. I joined the Territorial Army in 1981, whilst still in the sixth form, and went on to gain commissions in both the Royal Navy and British Army after qualifying as a teacher. I decided to leave the regular army in 2008 and return to teaching after an enjoyable, if somewhat eclectic service career that encompassed learning to parachute; Loan Service in Saudi Arabia; being a UN Military Observer in Bosnia whilst taking in Northern Ireland; the Arctic Ocean; Iraq; Sierra Leone and Afghanistan along the way. The army even funded my Master's degree and it was whilst researching the role of the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Anglo-Irish War that I decided to have a go at writing. I was lucky enough to have my work on the Anglo-Irish War and Irish Civil War published but I have always loved historical fiction and drew on my experience in the Armed Forces as well as an historian to write 'England's Janissary'. The rest, as they say, is history.