Biography

Life and Obituary

Life of Michael Anthony
Born 17th January 1942, the son of Welsh parents. His father was an Anglican parson, sometime honorary Canon of Bristol Cathedral and Rural Dean of Malmesbury, and finally vicar of Sherston. Michael grew up in the West Country and attended Wells Cathedral School and Malmesbury Grammar School. An early ambition had been to join the RAF and although he became a member of the Air Cadets and gained his pilot’s licence, the detection of a potential heart problem precluded this as a career. When he left school he worked in journalism for a while as a cub reporter on the Wiltshire Times. Subsequently he took a teaching certificate and entered the world of education. In the early 1970s he read English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia. At this time a career in law seemed the answer and he studied law for a while at Grays Inn. A short but colourful period teaching English in Libya followed, after which he returned to England, with London being his home henceforwards. Michael taught English Lit. at a college in Greenwich for more than 20 years, and also wrote or co-authored numerous radio scripts. His first novel, The Becket Factor, was published by Collins in 1990 to critical acclaim. His second, Dark Provenance (1995), returned to Canterbury Cathedral as its locale, and like its predecessor was an ecclesiastical thriller. So too was his third and final novel, Midnight Come (1998) and even a fourth Harrison story was a possibility. However he had put in a fair amount of work on his RAF novel – which he hoped and believed would be his best – when he suffered a massive heart attack from which he made a slow and typically gritty recovery, giving up his beloved pipe. After months of effort he slowly started writing again, but another attack in May 2003 carried him away, leaving A Cold Unhurried Hand only two-thirds written. This story has been completed by a writer friend and is to be published in 2006 by McHoo.