There’s not really much I care to say about myself. I’d rather you concentrated on the books, not the writer. I’m tempted to follow Patrick O’Brian’s example and describe myself simply as a dark man, choleric, and married.

I’ll also leave you to guess at my age. I’ll give you a hint: neither young nor old. In fact I feel I am the perfect age to have tackled Beren. I’m old enough to remember the kinder, deeper, more human era that preceded the present, within which it was still possible to write books like these, but young enough to have dispensed with a truckload of stiff and pointless notions about how human beings ought and ought not to behave.

Am I a career writer? Don’t make me laugh. There’s probably more chance of making a living by starting your own rock band. No, I’ve worked pretty solidly all my life at other occupations, most recently as a writer of scientific software. Although people tend to smile when I say it, I’ve always felt there are parallels between my day job and my hobby. Both involve the creation — almost the weaving — of a complicated object which is self-consistent and balanced, and which evolves from its beginnings to its finish. It is only the substrate that differs. Be it as it may, for the last few years it has tickled me to view myself as a software engineer by day and a story engineer in the evenings.

Cyril Connolly does not impress me greatly but he could come up with a good thing on occasion. What he wrote about the pram in the hallway being an enemy to good art is bang on. I’ve been lucky (in some senses of the word) to have been shielded, during the years I spent writing Beren One Hand, from most human interactions except the most cursory and dispassionate. Composing in a chilly garret is a lonely sort of existence but it does serve wonderfully as way to avoid distractions.