From Pow Camp to Oxford University

Michael Tanner was born in 1933, the second of four children. He was evacuated at the age of seven but returned to Bristol before the end of the blitz. A new baby put all his mother's resilience to the test. His father, ex trooper, was invalided back to Blighty in WW1. and became an ARP Warden in the evenings. Michael has two sons and a daughter from his first marriage and another son and stepson from his remarriage after the tragic death of his first wife. His daughter gave him a granddaughter. He ran nine London marathons and remains a keen amateur naturalist. His Bristol B.A. was followed by National Service, mostly as a subaltern serving with the K.A.R. in Kenya. After that he trained as a teacher and taught, mainly English, for 38 years, at secondary schools, meanwhile obtaining a B.A. Hons English at Birkbeck. Most of his spare time he writes, and squeezes in study of foreign languages, and trying to play the clarinet. He feels much gratitude to many, especially his parents and a diminutive, asthmatic Scotsman, who taught him English at Grammar School.