WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB?
I worked in the Civil Service initially moving to what was then the Trustee Savings Bank where I was a teller. I then changed and joined a leading insurance company where I settled.
Ted York
WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
I was born in London, my early life being spent in Streatham from where I commuted to the city.
YOU HAVE BEEN MARRIED 42 YEARS, WHERE DID YOU MEET YOUR WIFE?
We met in London in the offices of the insurance company where we both worked. Funny enough we didn't start seeing each other until I had left that company to go into partnership in my own insurance brokerage. It wasn't very successful as we lacked the discipline to make it work and two years later I had to seek gainful employment as I was getting married.
WHAT IS YOUR PROUDEST MOMENT?
Getting married followed by the birth of my two children and latterly grandchildren.
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS?
I had a yearning to run my own business once again and set up another insurance brokerage in the early 80s. This time I gave the commitment and made it work. I am an ex President of my local Round Table and Rotary club and during my tenure we raised a lot of money for children with cancer.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE MUSIC?
I like all types from classical to ELO, Billy Joel and Dire Straights. I was lucky enough to go to a Beatles concert at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon. Not as though you could hear them sing as the girls screamed so loud!
THE FILM YOU CAN WATCH TIME AND TIME AGAIN?
The Eagle Has Landed. A great action film based on the book by Jack Higgins.
THE FIGURE FROM HISTORY YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO BUY A DRINK?
Winston Churchill. His ongoing problem with depression that besotted him. How did he overcome his 'black dog'?
WHEN DID YOU START WRITING YOUR NOVELS?
It was odd. I had retired and was on the beach in the South of France when I finished a Frederick Forsyth book I was reading. Inexplicably I decided to start writing a novel and began Rosie, a rags to riches story of a woman born in 1878 to a Dockers family. She performs on stage, meets and marries a wealthy man, is an activist in the votes for women campaign, and works for the forerunner of the British secret service.
WHAT'S YOUR LATEST BOOK, TEARS OF THE WEST, ABOUT?
Dee is a student at London University writing her final thesis, "Are nanoparticles being properly controlled?" During her investigations she uncovers a sinister plot by a terrorist organization to attack the west using nanoparticles. Considering you can fit one billion nanoparticles on the head of a pin, the danger of a pharmaceutical company including toxic chemicals in cosmetics is frightening. Tears of the West explores the risk of a terrorist attack and the danger to women and men's fertility.