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I was born prematurely (feet first, all two and a half pounds of me) in Croydon, South London during early June 1944 - just four days before Hitler's V1 flying doodlebug bombs began raining down all around our neighbourhood. Years later my mother told me the story of how our house (with us inside) had one almost miraculous escape from these bombs. Maybe there's a novel somewhere in this for me? It's a strong possibility.
My father was a Canadian pilot serving with 78 Squadron RAF Bomber Command. He was killed in action on his 28th mission when I was six weeks old. Before I was born, my mother was also very involved in the war effort, serving as a WAAF at the top secret Bletchley Park establishment where the famous German Enigma code was eventually broken.
My first published novel, IN THE LONG RUN, had as its backdrop South Africa's real life event Comrades Marathon - 55 miles of torture run over massive hills, most years in considerable heat and humidity. This was selling spectacularly well for a first novel until my publishers went bust virtually overnight, so not a single penny of royalties ever found its way into my pocket.
I later re-published this title with Create Space. The book features a foreword written by BBC broadcaster and former Olympic athlete, Steve Cram. Steve, whose world record time for the mile stood for over eight years, was also guest of honour at the launch party of the original version of IN THE LONG RUN in March 2000. This was held at the London HQ of advertising giants Saatchi & Saatchi, where I was working at the time as a copywriter.
How the heck did I ever manage to get myself such a job in Don Draper land at 51 years old when only three years previously I had been a long-term unemployed loser with absolutely no educational qualifications to my name? That's another story altogether. One that I've recalled in all its crazy highs and lows in a memoir called AIN'T FINISHED YET. I can indeed identify with many aspects of the fabulous TV series Mad Men, although sadly from a personal point of view, with considerably less of the sex and huge salaries depicted.
BURIED PASTS, my second novel to be published, is a tribute to the father I never knew. It's no coincidence that the central character Mike Stafford's surname is so similar, nor that he comes from Brandon, Manitoba, my father's home town. Even the fictional RAF 79 Squadron is as close as possible to the real thing. In fact, I visualized Stafford as being my father throughout the writing. I liked to fondly imagine that this is how Dad, had he lived, would have responded to the same difficulties and dangers that Stafford finds himself confronting. Soon after its final rewrite the book became a quarter-finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel, in the process receiving a review from Publishers Weekly that described it as: 'An engaging and satisfying novel for fans of adventure stories with a heart.' I think Dad would have liked that.
In similar vein, I SPY BLETCHLEY PARK is a fictional tribute to my mother who was stationed at the famous codebreaking centre for two years during WW2. She was called Betty, and so is my young heroine. As with Dad's novel, I wrote this one with Mum always in my mind's eye. Like so many others who worked there in the utmost secrecy, she never once breathed a word of her involvement until officially cleared to do so over thirty years later. How’s that for Keeping Mum?
If you would like to know more about any of my books, or would like to contact me, please do visit my website at www.georgestratford.com .
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