Born in Teddington, Middlesex, in 1941, the youngest of two children of the marriage, I was born exactly 9½ months after the start of the wartime blitz on London during WWll.
Father, John (1906-1976) Seriously disabled by a childhood fall, he was nevertheless apprenticed as a ship’s engineer with Parsons, (developer of the steam turbine for ships). He spent the war as an engineer at the National Physical Laboratories, sited on the edge of Bushy Park, literally right across the road from the author’s birthplace. [The NPL labs were high on Hitler’s Top10 list of favoured targets]. After the war he became postmaster of a small general store on the edge of the Ashdown Forest, in E Sussex.
Mother, Mary Almeria (1902-1970), a victim of TB, from 7yo. Despite only 1 year of schooling, mother was at one time a public debater for the UK Tory party and a minor philosopher. In later years, was in constant correspondence with many of the UK’s most noted figures, including CS Lewis, TS Elliot, GB Shaw, numerous bishops and clergy and the Holy See, from whom she obtained a very rare dispensation regarding her earlier marriage.
Family: Much older sister, Valerie, from mother’s earlier, abusive marriage, (now deceased) and
Stella (1939-), also born in Teddington and now living in East Sussex, England, where she’s been most of her life.
Myself: Born with rubella and rickets, and not expected to live, I’ve contended all my life with dyslexia and moderate scoliosis, common effect of prenatal rickets.
Living with an aunt during school terms, from 12yo, I was brought up as a chorister in the C of E but developed an increasing aversion to religious proselytising and irrationality, preferring an entirely logical approach, built on a basis of provable fact, a philosophy I continue to the present day.
After a stint as a clerk and then being invalided out of London’s Metropolitan Police, I became a mechanic and took up flying, emigrating to Australia in ’67 to pursue this new passion. I have since built a number of light hovercraft and owned my own amphibious light aircraft but my health issues made a career in flying unsustainable. After 20 years as a self-employed mechanic, I developed an award-winning maze and tourist park at Healesville, on the outskirts of Melbourne, before retiring, c2003, to pursue this research, first inspired as a youngster, at a mere 12 years of age.
As a polymath and original thinker, the ancient mysteries have provided a consistent background throughout an unbelievably varied career, from police officer, insurance investigator, commercial pilot, electro-mechanical technician across a number of industries, inventor, maze designer and now writer. From philosophical concepts, I’ve gone on to physically explore the practical aspects of numerous lost technologies, as most notably evident at sites like the Giza plateau, Cuzco, and Teotihuacan.
Whilst on a long-overdue, extended holiday, in 1997, something of an epiphany inspired me to start writing, leading to more research and more discoveries and ultimately a decision, (c2002) to ‘retire’ and properly explore this life-long passion.
Having written two books, made 2 videos (made into 7 for YouTube) and a website, all with no response from Academia, I realised that only a practical, working model was likely to produce the results I desired.
17 years later and the last pieces of the jigsaw are finally coming together, with evidence from NASA and from genetics etc. inspiring some radical conclusions, possibly challenging to many with deeply-held religious convictions.
My Vision for 20/20, is to finally complete my MACE concept aircraft in order to demonstrate the full potential of this new and extraordinary technology.