Meet William.

A working life that became part of the writing.

William is a former colliery engineer whose writing is grounded in lived experience, industrial history and a long-standing interest in family research.

He spent twenty-five years in collieries, served as a trade union representative, gained management experience and earned honours in Mining Mechanical Engineering. The working environment of the pits, the men he knew and the events he witnessed became an important part of the perspective he later brought to his books.

His interests stretch well beyond mining. Decades of genealogy research led him through family records, historical documents and journeys across Scotland, Ireland and further afield. That work inspired books concerned with ancestry, identity and the importance of leaving a record for future generations.

Writing from memory, research and curiosity.

William’s books range from mining memoir and social history to ghost fiction, genealogy, golf-club history and poetry. The subjects differ, but a common thread runs through them: ordinary people, overlooked histories and the value of recording what might otherwise be lost.

In Why: A Collier’s Tale, he returned to a mining disaster he remembered from his youth. In his family-history books, he follows evidence across generations. In his fiction, real places and historical conditions provide the foundation for imagined stories.