Biography
Michael Towers was born in Cheltenham in England in post-World War Two, still-rationed Britain which he then escaped for most of the next decade – thanks to his father being in the army.
His father Bob had been a Desert Rat in the Norfolk Yeomanry regiment in WW2 and was in charge of an anti-tank unit which fought in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. He met Towers’ Estonian mother Helmi near Hamburg when she was a refugee and he was commander of a small garrison north of Hamburg.
Both of his parents had failing first marriages. Towers had two half-brothers, one of whom lived after his mother’s divorce with his Estonian father; the other had died of TB the year before Towers was born.
His father was stationed briefly in Egypt preceding the Suez crisis before the family spent three years in Cyprus, surviving the Greek Cypriot EOKA which was fighting the military and assassinating some British civilians. Towers had an idyllic time, oblivious to the politics and omnipresent danger.
Three years of living in Cyprus was followed by three in Malaya – with some time in Hong Kong – where his father was paymaster for a Gurkha regiment. Far less dangerous. The British struggle against the Communists was all but over by the time they arrived.
His parents decided that Towers had to start formal education after a succession of variable army schools so he was sent to a boarding school in rural Surrey. The head teacher insisted he had a smattering of French and Latin before he started three years late. He starred at cricket for the next years.
Towers progressed to Charterhouse, but his attainment and ability in cricket and football regressed as the 60s developed. His interest in pop and rock music soared apace as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones transformed the country culturally. Four of the original members of Genesis were in his house; he was partly taught guitar by one, Anthony Phillips.
He went on to read English at UCL as his dreams of making it in the world of music dissipated. The English course under Frank Kermode and Randolph Quirk was radical for its time. There were, for instance, six hour exams on both Chaucer and Shakespeare with the texts permitted.
After a year training at Sussex University, he taught for four years in the late 70s at controversial, progressive comprehensive Holland Park, about the most infamous secondary school in the country. Unfairly so. Many teachers were excellent at teacher-directed whole-class learning. A favourite pupil was Gideon Sams, taken by Holland Park after expulsion from other schools. Precocious Gideon, 15, had already written a novel The Punk, later made into a feature film.
A former girlfriend encouraged him to train as a journalist which he did at City University before spending more than five years working on London weeklies covering the boroughs of Kensington and Westminster. He interviewed many a novelist, including J.P.Donleavy, playwright and musician.
The boroughs provided ideal stomping grounds for him to learn the skills and tricks of his trade. He also learnt how to handle being on the picket lines in a strike lasting months one winter against the management. It was a late-gasp, doomed union action against the unforgiving new world of cost-cutting and, later, transforming technology.
A decade and more followed – from 1986 – with Towers working on national papers during the last days most were sited in or near Fleet Street. He was staff on The Sunday Express for many years, but worked regularly and survived on many tabloid titles including the Daily Mirror, Daily Star and The Sun. These were the last halcyon years when nationals were still selling in their millions. Kelvin Mackenzie was ruling his frenetic roost as editor at The Sun in “Freddie ate my hamster” days.
Towers’ days on the Mirror came to a close with him elegiacally savouring the views from 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf from its offices as London’s docklands were totally transformed.
He and his wife decided in 2001, shortly before September 11, to decamp from the capital. Within months they headed for the Dorset-Hampshire border with their three children. After some years teaching again, and with his children having left or leaving home, he decided it was time to write before time ran out. Finally in earnest.
