Richard Platt's biography

An inventive editor once wrote that I was “born in a storm-tossed rowing boat…” The truth is more dull! I was actually born in a hospital in Northumberland; my mother was a pharmacist and my father a civil engineer. I spent most of my childhood in an ordinary house in a south London suburb.

Life began to get interesting when I left secondary school. I spent a year on a student exchange at the Gunnery school in Connecticut, then returned to the UK to study civil engineering. I was rubbish at this, so I switched to a design degree course. Photography was my passion, and after graduating I worked for a small London gallery called Camerawork, then began writing a column in a photography magazine.

My first book

The first book I wrote was on photography, too. It terrified me! I had never written more than about 1,000 words at a time, and now I had to come up with 80,000. And I had a full-time job. Somehow, I managed it, though I didn’t sleep much.

Books for children

My first really successful book was a collaboration with illustrator Stephen Biesty: Incredible Cross Sections. It sold more than a million copies for publishers Dorling Kindersley. The Guardian later chose it as one of the three greatest children’s books of the 1990s. I went on to write 32 books for DK.

I worked for other clients, too, on very varied projects. I wrote advertising copy for Ilford Photo and Parker Pens. I worked in interactive multimedia, including a CD-ROM version of Sophie’s World, and some comic animations for a museum in Waterford, Ireland. I even wrote restaurant reviews for the Automobile Association (I put on 4kg doing this, because writing about food made me hungry.)

Parental guidance

I thought I was doing pretty well by now: I had a car and a flat; I had met a wonderful woman and got married. However, my mum brought me down to earth. When I showed her my latest book, she glanced at it and asked "When are you going to write a real book, Darling?" I tried harder after that.

Gradually, themes emerged in my writing. I have become an amateur expert on the sea, and especially on smuggling and piracy. (My website, smuggling.co.uk, is a top source for smuggling information.) I have also become fascinated by social history and by the history of science and technology.

However, I will – and do – write about almost anything, because it’s the variety of my work that I enjoy.

When I'm not writing...

...I'm likely to be out on my recumbent bike cycling round country lanes near my home (see right)... or making bread... or fiddling with some computer code (I'm a closet geek, and built this website myself) ... or gardening with my wife Mary. We live in rural Kent. We have a black cat, and five chickens called Maisie, Molly, Dolly, Aphrodite and Tikka.

Want to know EVEN MORE?!

An exhaustive biography at Answers.com tells you more about me than even I can remember!