Born in Scotland, reading helped Michael Burr through early years that might have been termed ‘eclectic’, in that if illness or accident beckoned, it beckoned him. Reading Sutcliff, Stevenson, Forester, Trease and Tranter at the behest of teachers who cared enough to recommend ‘something you might like’ got a perennial absentee through a sickly childhood, and lit a fire for the past that eventually found expression in a Master’s degree in History.

Training for a teaching career in New Zealand not only taught an impressionable 18-year-old that exhilarating rugby is founded on the holy trinity of possession, position and pace, but added another Master’s in Education during a career that saw him teach all ages, from primary school to university, with a sideline diversion as an inspector of schools.

It’s probably axiomatic that a people-centred occupation should lead in retirement to such a people-centred pastime as writing historical fiction, but Michael has never been able to determine whether History is the chicken or the egg in that relationship. However, true happiness came on the day he decided that it really didn’t matter because people — strong, weak, ordinary, extraordinary and just plain peculiar — are at the centre of history’s events, and its stories need to reflect that if they are to be credible.

And anyway — remembering the legendary Scottish dislike for waste, why would anyone pass up the beguiling canvas that history has provided down the centuries?

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