Richard Major

is essentially a father. His two children, a ten year-old who builds rockets and an eleven year-old who is writing a novel, look after him and educate him. His wife, who also does her bit, is a diplomat. She picked him up at Oxford; after six years in Central Europe (Ljubljana, Budapest), where he lectured at various universities, the family moved to her new posting in Africa. Major’s own novel Quintember, about a Cambridge don who moonlights as assassin to the British Establishment is orderable on the U.K. Amazon.