Tony Bradman was born in Balham, London, and grew up in south London. After attending local primary and grammar schools he graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge, then worked as a journalist. He spent eleven years on the staff of Parents magazine. After university he started sending poems to small magazines and got a few published in IRON. Poetry Review, the magazine of the Poetry Society, gave him his first payment for his writing...[pound]15 for a poem. He now lives in Beckenham, less than a mile from the area of south London where he grew up. He is children's fiction reviewer for the Daily Telegraph.