Tom Pocock was the author of eighteen books (and editor of two more), mostly biographies but including two about his experiences as a newspaper war correspondent. Born in London in 1925, he was educated at Westminster School and Cheltenham College, joining the Royal Navy in 1943. He was at sea during the invasion of Normandy and, having suffered from ill health, returned to civilian life and in 1945 became a war correspondent at the age of nineteen, the youngest of the Second World War. He has contributed to many magazines and appeared on television documentaries about Nelson and the subject of another of his biographies, the novelist and imperialist Sir Rider Haggard.
