At boarding school, after lights-out, Peter J Earle was telling stories before he could write.

He has been an agricultural field technician, a concrete foreman, a farm manager, a stock feed salesman, a site surveyor, an auctioneer, owned his own construction company, had his own second-hand shop and a backpackers’ hostel. He has been in prison in Zambia, owned a boat on the Okavango Delta, hunted big game, sung in a band and has over sixty parachute jumps to his credit.