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Douglas McArthur, author biography
When I left school in the sixties, jobs were plentiful, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had a holiday job working in a steel stockholders, when I heard there was a job going as a reporter on the local paper and from that chance beginning, albeit with a few hiccups along the way, I have kept body and soul together.
I was apprenticed to the Grantham Journal in Lincolnshire as a journalist. From there, I followed a trail of newspapers from Melton Mowbray to Leicester, London and Kent, before joining the Ministry of Defence as an Information Officer.
A year or so in, I was asked to start a new newspaper for the British Army to run in tandem with the popular Soldier Magazine. This came with promotion and I ran the paper for two years. Then, I was posted to Brecon looking after all PR matters for the army in Wales.
When we came to Wales, we created a wine bar in Abergavenny, a strongly held desire of my wife. I worked the bar in the evenings, but shortly after was posted to RAF Strike Command at High Wycombe. I took the decision to resign and was immediately asked to start a newspaper for the Territorial Army in Wales.
But there was a snag, I had to join the TA, and go through officer training which I naively agreed to do. After a year running all over Sennybridge Training Area and digging most of it up, at the age of 34 I duly presented myself at Sandhurst. I was not a memorable cadet but armed with age and cunning I managed to look as if I was keeping up with youth and speed and was duly awarded my first pip.
I joined the fledgling TA Pool of Information Officers, a very jolly club which did an enormous amount of positive PR work for the army, Regular and TA, subsequently morphing into the Media Ops Group. I also completed two short service Regular commissions.
I started writing books, and one or two even finished, but I wasn’t happy with any of them. I was fascinated by the Roman invasion of Cambria and could see a book there so duly put finger to keyboard and for once the story seemed to flow quite naturally.
Then, as well as starting the second of what will be a trilogy, as my hero Lenc wanders through some of the momentous events of that turbulent time I had to prepare my book for print and digital. In my ignorance, I thought that something I could manage quite easily.
How wrong I was. This was a challenge I never expected. Perhaps I should write a book about it.