I was born in Yeovil, Somerset, the youngest of four. My interest in poetry was encouraged by a teacher who secretly sent one of my poems to Young Elizabethan and then presented me, at the age of eleven, with the magazine containing my first published poem and a ten-shilling note from the publisher.

After secondary school I attended Trent Park College in London, qualified as a teacher, married, taught in Essex and Somerset and gained my first headship in Dorset at the age of 27. I later moved to Hampshire where, after two subsequent headships, a divorce, and gaining a Masters’ degree, I was happy to retire and settle for my sea front flat at Lee-on-the-Solent.

I have always loved writing. An attack of nostalgia for childhood and hometown roots led to my writing a weekly column, Reflections, for the Western Gazette which ran for three years in the mid-eighties. My inability to find appropriate assembly material at school prompted to write my own book, Ideas for Assemblies which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1990. Since retiring I’ve written a collection of poems, Recitable Rhymes, published in Pipers’ Ash in 2001 and various poems for children - one of which found its way into the Ginn Anthology, Travelling Light, where it sits in good company with poems by Shakespeare, Tennyson, Wordsworth and the like!

Winning first prize in the 2005 Forward Press Top 100 Poets came not only as a complete shock but also as one of the most unexpected surprises I remember. And the prize money certainly beats the Young Elizabethan ten shilling note!