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Short version Ian Gosling was born in Buckinghamshire and brought up in Cambridgeshire. He moved to Rutland - England's smallest county - 20 years ago, with his wife Maggie and their three children. ‘The Puppet Master’ is his first novel |
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Long version 1953 was a very good year – the country had a new Queen, the world had new heroes in Hilary and Tenzing, and in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Mr and Mrs Gosling had a baby boy Nine years later – via Somerset and Kent – we moved to St Neots, a small market town in Huntingdonshire., where my father was the Borough Engineer. I attended Huntingdon Grammar School, and later, following in my father's footsteps, I got a job with the local council – although for reasons that I have long forgotten, I became an accountant I married 1974 and then I spent the next twelve years moving my family around the country, always in search of a better job. In 1980 I returned to Buckinghamshire, where we lived for nearly seven years. Maggie and our children (Sarah, Nick & Claire) would have been happy to stay there. But the grass is always... and when I got a job with the Post Office we moved to Rutland – so I am now only 40 miles from St Neots, the place I still think of as 'home' I spent fourteen years with the Post Office, working in Leicester, Rugby, Chesterfield and London – although somewhere along the way I'd stopped being an accountant and become a operations project manager. Since 2001 I have worked as a contract project manager, in such diverse places as Edinburgh, London, Macclesfield and Kuwait – we still live in Rutland Things that I like Some of my favourite novels East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy A Painted House by John Grisham, Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming, The Ipcress File by Len Deighton, The Book of Dave by Will Self, The Falls by Ian Rankin A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter The Silver Bears by Paul E. Erdman, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby A Small death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson Day of The Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin
Some of my favourite non-fiction Pictorial Guides to The Lakeland Fell by A Wainwright, Tony Benn's diaries The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, The Death Zone by Matt Dickinson World Cup 2003 The official account of England's World Cup triumph Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela,
Some favourite movies & TV shows TV - Wire in The Blood, Rebus, Trial & Retribution, CSI, Cracker, Prime Suspect Hill Street Blues, Columbo, Silent Witness Movies - Goodfellas, Dirty Harry, LA Confidential, Get Carter, The Long Good Friday The Godfather, Sea of Love, The Wicker Man, The Blues Brothers, The Commitments
Musical heroes Van Morrison, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix Paul Weller, Ray Davies, John Lennon, Paul Simon
... and heroines Joni Mitchell, Annie Lennox, Joan Baez, Aretha Franklin Janis Joplin, Etta James, Christine Perfect (McVie)
some great albums (by none of the above) Meddle : Pink Floyd ~ Inherit the Wind : Wilton Felder ~ Sleeps With Angels : Neil Young Beggars Banquet : The Rolling Stones ~ A Love Supreme ~ John Coltrane The Soft Bulletin : The Flaming Lips ~ Bongo Fury : Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart
some great songs (not included above) In the Midnight Hour : Wilson Pickett ~ Redemption Song : Bob Marley Rock the Casbah : The Clash ~ Tangled up in Blue : Bob Dylan Love Will Tear Us Apart : Joy Division ~ Crazy : Willie Nelson
some classical music Fauré Requiem ~ Saint-Saëns Symphony No.3 ~ Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue Elgar Cello Concerto ~ Bernstein America Pachabel Canon ~ Albinoni Adagio ~ Stravinsky Petrushka
2 Great Teams LEEDS UNITED 1964/1974 LEICESTER TIGERS 1998/2002
Some favourite places the summit of Blencathra ~ the beach at Old Hunstanton ~ the harbour at Seahouses Crinkle Crags ~ Langdale ~ Buttermere ~ Lathkill Dale ~ Froggat Edge ~ Chatsworth Salisbury Crags ~ the Water of Leith ~ Crammond ~ the Shore Cambridge ~ The City of London ~ Keswick ~ Grasmere ~ Cromer ~ Buckden Tate Modern ~ St Pancras Station ~ Ely Cathedral ~ Welford Road
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