Ad-man, copywriter, textbook author, journalist, proofreader, editor, speechwriter and book reviewer, it is hardly surprising that at some point, the author would produce a book. What is, perhaps, unusual is that he would be 76 when he finally did so, and that he was also a restaurant critic, worked in and lectured on marketing, read for Tape Aids for the Blind, and variously owned a pair of fruit and vegetable shops, a service station, a personnel consultancy, and a hi-tech industrial coating company. Plus three years in the RAF at the start. This autobiography is, however, by no means a simple recounting of places, people and positions. Parallel with his career runs the personal narrative: three wives, four sons - one of whom he has never seen - and some other relationships. From wartime Liverpool, locations shift to Malaya, London, Thailand and South Africa, There are some major regrets, misfortunes and serendipities. Crowns for Convoy is a chronicle of lifestyles that no longer exist, in places that have changed for ever, presented in a dryly sardonic and succinctly mordant style, and enlivened by digressions, numerous anecdotes, and vivid recollections which bring the journey to life for the reader in an absorbing and entertaining narrative.