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I was born in North Finchley, emigrated with my English parents to Natal, South Africa and fought with the Natal Mounted Rifles, volunteering in 1939 at age sixteen.
My regiment faced Axis forces progressively on five fronts — in Kenya, Central Abyssinia, the Western Desert in Egypt and Cyrenaica and Italy.
With almost six years of active service and convalenscence I came to understand the psychology of men at bay through first-hand experience and the dynamics of acute and sustained terror.
War evoked in me both curiosity and discovery, leading to the mastery of Medicine and Surgery at Sheffield Univertisy where the hidden effects of shrapnel and other missiles could be investigated further like those which had penetrated my own body.
In my long standing friendship with Barbara Cartland we sometimes talked of the impact that the World Wars had on society. Barbara, herself, had lost two brothers and her father killed in them. It was Barbara who encouraged me to publish my own story (War, Wine and Valour) which she had seen in my extensive war diaries.

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