I was lucky to have some great teachers at school, which in my case was Kent College, Canterbury. Mr Slater, my English teacher, taught me how to argue a case in writing. Mr Wright, my history teacher, taught me the value of fairness and tolerance. And Mr Bircumshaw, my French and German teacher, gave me tuition one evening a week over many years to get me into Brasenose College, his own former college in Oxford.
My father was British, my mother was Swiss, my wife is German, I was born in Belgium and I did a year of VSO in Cameroon. And the first book I can remember reading was Tintin. So travel is in my blood. And I like to travel in my books, too. I love breaking the confines of national borders. Finding out what was going on in other countries gives me a deeper, and often more tolerant perspective on my subject matter.
Their example motivated me to become a teacher myself, and I taught French and German in comprehensive schools in Banbury and in Daventry. And that taught me at least as much as all I had learned as a pupil at Kent College.
From teaching I migrated to writing school text books – French and German textbooks for pupils learning modern languages in Britain, and later English textbooks for pupils learning English in Germany. So I have been writing most of my life.
It is only recently that I have made the leap to writing my own books. I find the act of writing therapeutic. My books are my companions for months on end as I plan them, write them and revise them. And I am rather sad to lose them when they go off to the publisher. But, like with my three children, I am above all happy and proud to see them go out and make their own way in the world.
Sydney Thorne 