Born 1925, Robert Sharpe left school at fourteen and entered the Royal Marines at seventeen. He served aboard HMS Rodney, then in 44, later 40 Commando, and the SBS. He went to sea as mate, bosun or deckhand of an ocean-going yacht depending on the length of the voyage and how long the Glenmore was tied up to the jetty. Leaving the ship at New York he went to Canada and joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a film editor. From the girl dancers he learned how to do a buck and wing. After a month of washing dishes and cleaning floors at the Banff Springs Hotel in BC he took, with some relish, a job as topographer for the Trans Canada Highway on a new road through the Selkirk Mountains, followed by a winter in TCH's Snow and Avalanche Research Unit in Glacier BC. His next job was as Reporter/Photographer for the Northern Daily News in Kirkland Lake, a gold mining town on the Arctic Circle. Next was News Editor, Station CHEX radio and TV station, in Peterborough, Ontario, followed by Editor of The Trillium, journal of the Ontario Civil Service. He returned to the UK and became reporter and radio interviewer for the London Press Service of the Central Office of Information. He transferred to the MOD as PRO for The Army in Scotland and again to the Transport and Road Research Laboratory as head of publicity and publications. He took early retirement at fifty-four after a contre-temps with an MP.
