Melvin Burgess was born on April 25, 1954, in Twickenham, Surrey. Although he had an unhappy time at school and often did not do well in his studies, he did enjoy writing and reading. His favourite book as a child was Kenneth Grahames The Wind in the Willows (1908). As a teenager he enjoyed fantasy novels, particularly Mervyn Peakes Gormenghast trilogy (Titus Groan, 1946; Gormenghast, 1950; and Titus Alone, 1959). Other writers who influenced Burgess were George Orwell and the German poet-dramatist Bertolt Brecht. Burgess had some encouragement to write when he was a teenager, but did not consider it seriously until he was 20, when he started writing fantasy novels and experimenting with different forms. ...