JeanHood.co.uk

I always loved history, far too much to study it at school. Instead I chose languages, and went on to read English Literature at the University of Durham before getting a job as an advertising copywriter in the cardboard industry. But for years I had a second life, at weekends, in the Sealed Knot Society of Cavaliers and Roundheads, wielding sword and carbine in the Royalist cause — and filling the role of local area public relations officer.

In 1979 I went to work for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, initially in advertising but soon as Information Officer. The English Civil War was, they seemed to think, the ideal background for getting to grips with maritime history...Several very rewarding years followed, during which I answered questions from around the world on merchant ships past and present for freight forwarders, marine lawyers, historians, divers, art dealers, members of the public—just about anyone.

During those years at LR, I came across the name of an 18C East Indiaman, Winterton. She became the obsession that, almost 20 years later (by which time I had left LR and raised a family) became the subject of my first maritime book: Marked For Misfortune, published by Conway for whom I have been writing ever since. Long before that I wrote a children’s book The Dragon of Brog, published in hardback 1994, paperback in 1996, by Oxford (with wonderful illustrations by Peter Kavanagh).