GS Revel Burroughs
G S Revel Burroughs
I grew up in a house dominated by Essex girls. In the late '60s, after my sisters had been born, my parents decided to uproot their little family from London and moved to a field in South Warwickshire. I still haven't forgiven them.
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I was born in a late summer haze in Royal Leamington Spa in 1971 and grew up in a Council house in the countryside just ten miles from Stratford upon Avon.
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I attended Shipston Primary school during the mid to late 70s and have nothing to say about it save for the fact that we small bunch of people were largely taught in sheds overlooked by a Victorian Workhouse. As a 70s child I was largely left to my own devices. Parenting in those days consisted of parents opening the front door and inviting their children to be the other side, regardless of the weather. We gravitated home when the street lights came on.​​
Author with mother Circa 1976
The 80s saw me deposited for an extension of my education at Shipston High School. I walked to school every morning and home again every lunch-time. It surprise me to this day that I bothered to go back after lunch, but I always did. I never once had a school dinner. I didn't like people then and my tolerance for them now hasn't improved much. I don't like crowds and school was nothing if not a crowd of seriously uneducated children with whom I had nothing in common.
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I enjoyed English and excelled at my classes for three years. My fourth year saw the arrival of a new English teacher who quite simply hated boys. I kid you not. My grades fell off the scale and my Dad refused to believe me. Until he met her. And walked out of a meeting with her. He never criticised my English grades ever again. But I was stuck with her and my grades never improved.
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I left school with few grades, a social phobia that was about to announce its arrival and no ambition to do anything in life. Autumn 1988 saw the beginning of my Dark Age.
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By the time I came out of my struggles I was years behind my contemporaries. I was shy, socially awkward and I still hated crowds. I also intensely dislike answering phones and I have no idea why. A ringing phone gives me the chills. I also had no friends and an even bleaker future.
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At the back end of the 20th Century I ignored my social phobia and went back to college. I studied English Literature and Law at A-Level and enjoyed myself immensely. I rediscovered a passion for learning and books, neither of which has subsided in the intervening years.
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I got a job, too, which in the early part of the 90s seemed unlikely. I started working at Dixons part-time while I tried my hand at studying English literature at Birmingham University. Sadly my anxiety got the better of me and I quit my course in favour of working full time.
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In 2005 I went to work for HSBC and immediately regretted it. By the end of the year I started working for Sky Television as a dish-jockey which I stayed at for 11 years. It was the best job I ever had until the degree holders got involved and started micro managing everything. They eventually forced me out of my job and into the wilderness once again.
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I have since worked for a water and coffee company, which was crap, and now I work for an engineering company manufacturing and installing commercial gates up and down the length of our beautiful country.
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I am working on my next book while trying to figure out a way of promoting my current one, building this website, increasing my social media presence, advertising my book and not going bankrupt as I do so.
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About the Author
Crime and Thriller writer with a passion for plot-led, solvable mysteries. Fan of the Golden Age and all things Hitchcock. Click Here for a detailed bio.
