I was born in London in 1936 of conventional English parents and grew up during the second world war. When I was five my family moved to Coulsdon in Surrey which then still had the feel of a country village. My earliest memories are of wading through fields of golden wheat with skylarks singing their hearts out overhead to plunge into cool bluebell woods with their sudden secret pools where kingfishers, chaffinches, wrens, owls, butterflies, dragonflies, spiders, lizards, snakes and every conceivable kind of beetle scurried about on evidently vital business. Paradoxically, despite the war and Nazi bombs daily dropping indiscriminately into this sacred childhood dream, I felt perfectly safe on these expeditions which always began with my heading up to the downs where, usually alone, sometimes with my brother, sometimes with my kite, I relished each new secret exploration into the fabulous world of tiny creatures that seemed to inhabit every myriad crevice and chink of what to me was an infinite personal realm.

Sometimes, during these expeditions I would encounter a lusty young farmhand with his shirt off and was aware at this early age that I was physically attracted to men. But I somehow knew instinctively not to speak of this mystifying fact to either adults or childhood friends and, despite this early self knowledge, had no sexual experiences whatsoever during a decade of primary and grammar schooling - though I was sometimes maddened by powerful feelings of lust directed longingly and secretly at a select few of the more athletic senior boys who seemed to belong to a different species from me.

While I was in my final year at grammar school, preparing for university, my father’s wholesale catering supply business went bankrupt (through no fault of his own - a change in government policy removed his entire market at a stroke). Although this seemed a disaster at the time I’ve since come to view this misfortune of my father's as lucky for me personally because it prevented my following a conventional path to a conventional profession. I was only 15 but had passed seven subjects at GCE Ordinary Level and easily got a job as a junior assistant - office boy really - in an architectural office where I began evening studies with a view to qualifying as an architect. However, after two year's working every hour of the day and night, I was called up for national service and at the time this seemed a heaven-sent escape from teenage angst that was by then threatening to overwhelm me.

I spent the next two years in the Royal Air Force where I was trained in electronics and posted to the Far East. After a month in Singapore I was posted to Ceylon for a year working as a non-commissioned officer in charge of the Circuit Control Section of the Signals Centre, Negombo. This was a large RAF airport and base a dozen miles north of Colombo where my work consisted chiefly of selecting the best frequencies for transmission and reception of radio signals for CAF - the Commonwealth Air Forces Communications network. It was my responsibility to maintain 24/7 ‘solid’ (i.e. interference-free) radio communication with Circuit Control Centres in London, Nairobi, Singapore and Melbourne, regardless of local atmospheric conditions. (It was a peak year in the eleven-year sunspot cycle at the time so this was no easy task.) I was also responsible for servicing and maintenance of the receivers and teleprinters and maintaining order in the section which consisted of about twenty airmen.

In the hut where I lived my fellow national servicemen were all from 18 to 20 and walked about naked most of the time because of the heat. They talked about sex nonstop and made it clear what they'd do to any ‘filthy queer’ who tried it on with them and I naively took their bragging and hostility at face value and kept as low a profile as I could. I remember walking among the coconut palms at night crying with loneliness and despair as I looked into the pools of light in our huts where what I then thought of as ‘normal’ men were laughing together, drinking together and playing cards together. Curiously, this caused me to doubt the wisdom of the career in architecture that had more or less been thrust on me but at this time I couldn’t think of anything better to do and I didn’t yet have the courage to ‘drop out’ so after leaving the RAF (with a glowing discharge certificate) I reluctantly returned to the same architectural firm and studies.

For the next four years I worked as a full-time architect at a number of different firms and studied in the evenings at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster). I was still living with my parents in Surrey so this involved the misery of daily commuting. Although I was good at the work, well-paid with a company car - and for my last year ran a major project with graduate architects under me - I was desperately lonely and unhappy and gradually became disenchanted with the whole idea of architecture. It seemed to me that I was continually forced to work on projects I totally disapproved of. One of my last jobs involved designing pig-farrowing and fattening houses for a farmer in Berkshire. The work was being constructed by direct labour so my boss sent me to live on the farm to supervise the laying and construction of the various buildings. I spent my days working on a project I despised (with a one sexy farmhand as my only distraction) and my evenings arguing with the farmer that what we were doing was immoral.

At about this time I met and was desperately attracted to another young architect. As far as I could tell he didn’t reciprocate my feelings and I thought I was as miserable as I could be. But when he got married and emigrated to Canada I hit rock bottom and came close to suicide, decided against it and finally, after much agonising, in 1959, ‘dropped out’, sold ‘all my worldly goods’ and took a one-way train ticket to the south of France. Looking back, it seems to me that it was at this point that my adult life began.

For the next three years or so I lived in France - winters in Paris, summers in Provence - and began pouring out novels and short stories full of anguish and romance. Of course I knew better than anyone that there was nothing romantic about being poor and alone in a big city because I was soon broke and had to do a range of jobs to support myself. I washed dishes, painted houses, sold crêpes in the street and worked as a waiter in various restaurants until, in one in Provence, to my astonishment, I virtually became the manager. My French gradually became fluent and I became more and more interested in the business of languages and language learning and, for my last year in France, was able to eke out a precarious existence giving private tuition in English to wealthy, usually mean, often exceedingly eccentric, French aristocrats of both sexes - who usually, though not always, made passes at me which I usually, though not always, rebuffed.

When I returned to London in the early 1960’s I began teaching English full time and in 1964 got a job at a school in central London called International House and was almost immediately put in charge of their newly installed language laboratory. At this time this was a completely new field and as it happened my disparate experience in English teaching, architecture and electronics stood me in good stead. For the next six years I sublimated all my emotional and sexual despair in pioneering methods of working with this complex equipment, became a director of the school and travelled widely for them, setting up schools, installing language laboratories, training teachers to use them, giving lectures and seminars and so on in Europe, North Africa, the Far East and the USA. During this period also, I wrote and published a ground-breaking English language course for foreign students called English Fast and by 1970 it was selling well enough to support me modestly and enable me to give up full-time teaching and lecturing to return to more imaginative work. (I'm happy to say I haven't had a full-time job since.) See: Publications

In 1971, at the age of thirty-five, after a lifetime of boasting that I was never ill I became diabetic. Once I’d got over the initial shock of learning that I’d have to inject myself with insulin every day for the rest of my life, the inevitable question ‘why me?’ demanded an answer. So I began reading on the subject and soon discovered I’d been eating entirely the wrong diet. This is a big subject and this isn’t the place to go into it. Suffice to say that had I known then what I know now I needn’t have become diabetic at all. So - despite my early concerns for animal welfare - my original reasons for changing to a vegan wholefood diet, were concerned more with health than ethics.

Also in 1971, the gay liberation movement was stirring in Britain and I threw myself into it as soon as I heard about it. Among its many powerful influences was the almost ritualistic taking of LSD which was thought essential by GLF's leading lights for the dissolution of the self-oppression produced by our treatment throughout our lives as worse than worthless. GLF also pioneered techniques for the rebuttal of society's vicious lies about us and the historic recovery of our pride in ourselves as valuable equal citizens. As a result of all these dramatic changes, I dropped out (for the second time!) and threw myself into the alternative culture that was burgeoning everywhere at the time. This in turn led to two other important events in my life: first, a musician friend and I formed a band called Everyone Involved and spent a year making an album called Either/Or which, once finished, we idealistically gave away free, sometimes in the street. Second, I was a founder-member of Gay Sweatshop, the theatre group which, in 1975, staged the first out-and-proud season of gay plays in the world (including one of mine called Ships). I've recently heard from an Australian record-producer that my "A Gay Song" from Either/Or was the first recording of an out-and-proud gay song in the world. Two world firsts! Wow! See: Either/Or

The forming of Everyone Involved and the making of Either/Or led to the most important event of my life. One day in October 1972, the band's keyboard player turned up at a rehearsal session with a seventeen-year-old school friend called Peter Granger and I fell instantly, completely, absolutely, unconditionally and utterly in love with this wonderful beautiful man who became the emotional core of my life and remains so to this day.

Our loving friendship lasted for fourteen magical years until, on October 22nd 1986, my true love was run down and killed by a bunch of brainless teenagers in a stolen car. Disbelief, shock and despair overwhelmed me for years until I conceived the idea of writing and publishing a poem to celebrate the joy and privilege of knowing the best and most beautiful man that ever lived. See Beloved Friend.

Twenty-two years have passed since Pete's tragic death and thirty-seven since I first met him and my love for him has weathered every tempest life has placed in its path. To such an extent that by six years ago I sincerely believed I'd learned to live again in resigned accept-ance of the world in its impoverished state. Then, just before Christmas 2002, another event occurred to bring a taste of Peter Granger magic back into my life. His widow rang me from her home in California to tell me their son James was moving to London and asked if I'd help him find somewhere to live. For a moment I was so stunned, astonished and honoured at this totally unexpected reconnection with the magic man of my life that I was struck dumb. When I got my breath back, I said: "It would be a privilege."

I'd last seen James as a toddler in his father's arms but when we finally met again I found he'd grown up into an enchanting 17-year-old (the exact age his father was when I first met him!) with Pete's looks, charm and charisma and at our first meeting as adults we connected immediately and I truthfully told him his father would have been proud of him. This wonderful turn of events brought out all my nurturing instincts and James soon became the new most important man in the world for me and, effectively, my spiritual son. How astonishing! For sixteen years I'd been a non-person in Pete's family's life but then, for a few precious years, I became a valued friend again. Life is full of surprises, some of them wonderful, thank god.

So now, after six years of doing my best to be a supportive surrogate dad, I'm proud to be able to say that this delightful young man has successfully negotiated the treacherous rapids of his troublesome teenage years, got married and settled down in the Californian town where he grew up. I admit I selfishly preferred it when he lived in London and I knew every single day that he might turn up at my door with his habitual cheery greeting and honest, shining eyes that remind me so powerfully of his wonderful father. Look at these photos and you'll see what I mean...

So now, I'm back where I started, making solitary daily explorations into the fascinating world of exotic creatures that inhabit London's urban jungle whose forests contain inhabitants equally as baffling and certainly more dangerous than those I first encountered over sixty years ago on my daily explorations of the idyllic Surrey countryside of my childhood.