John Chapman was born in Surrey and educated at Epsom College. He took a degree in agriculture at London University and worked in Malaya for the Rubber Research Institute for eight years. Returning to England in 1963, he was, briefly, a teacher and then worked in public relations for over twenty years. A keen amateur actor all his life, he turned professional after his retirement (stage name John Nicholas) and has appeared on television and in many theatre productions. He was recently seen in a national tour of ‘Rebecca’. He has written many articles, and some poetry, over the years, but ‘Playing the Empire’ is his first book.
He is married, with two grown-up children. He is 75 and lives in Dorset, in south-west England.
The Pedlar's Weblog 
🙂
I am a new blogger. I read your bio. If you are not being read, I am in trouble.
drtombibey.wordpress.com
John,
I plan a post first thing in the am (E.S.T.) that mentions your blog. With it I hope to generate some U.S. traffic for your blog, but more than that I hope to stimulate trans-Atlantic discussion.
Look forward to reading your work. As you can see from mine, I could stand some culture!
Dr. B
drtombibey.wordpress.com
Tom
I’m most grateful. I’ll do what I can to reciprocate. I’m all for transatlantic interchange. Because of the movies, and our common (almost) language, we Brits tend to think that we know about America; but I suspect that we have many wrong ideas!
Hello,
This is Rose writing from http://www.huliq.com. I visited your blog and liked your content.
Would you be interested to send us a guest post on any of the issues related to the topics that you cover in your blog. We will publish it in our site http://www.huliq.com
In return with each guest blog we will give one link in the author’s biline back to your blog. We only ask that the guest post ( we prefer it be a news coverage, sources can be Google News, CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo News, BBC and others) be a unique story and not be published in your blog.
HULIQ is indexed by Google News and Google requires that the length of the unique news is at least 5 paragraphs. We desire it to be at least 6 paragraphs if possible. And that all need to be a unique content. Once you send us a new story totally unique we will immediately publish it with you link in it, and within 15 minutes it should be indexed by Google News.
Please let me know if you may have any questions about http://www.huliq.com.
If you want to consult the topic with me first that’s perfectly fine as well.
Many thanks
Thought you might like to know that I found your blog while looking for information about Hardy country. Your photos are lovely and I learned that Piddletrenthide is a real place (it also features in “Lark Rise to Candleford”) I am much inspired to visit that part of England again after gap of about 40 years ….
A snippet on language use from Australia – in Germany recently, the PM Kevin Rudd said it was unlikely any progress would emerge from the Major Economies Forum “by way of detailed programmatic specificity”.
Ros,
Sydney, Australia
How good to hear from you, Ros! I only visited Sydney once – and that was in 1962! I’m glad you like the pictures; it’s time I did some more. If you do come on a visit to ‘Wessex’, let me know; perhaps we could meet up.
Loved your quote from Mr Rudd. A prize piece of neopolitical obscurantism (otherwise known as gobbledegook)!
John