Nick Smyth

About the author

Nick Smyth was born in Kent in 1934 and spent his youth on a remote tobacco farm in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Back in England, after an engineering apprenticeship in Stafford, he married Margaret in 1969 and moved to the steel industry in Scunthorpe.

In 1978, the family moved to Wales and Nick worked as an international contractor, experiencing a wealth of cultures, in India, the Colombian jungle, Egypt, Algeria, all over Eastern and Western Europe, not to mention long hours on North Sea oil platforms, where The Condor Stone emerged from a fertile mind during the evenings.

The name of the book and the cover gives away the fact that South America comes into the story. Nick has always been fascinated by South America.

He returned to help in the family holiday business, winning several prestigious awards, including the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme's "Best B&B in Britain".

Nick writes for a local magazine and has several more novels in progress.

He also makes iron sculptures and table lamps out of scrap metal.

He speaks French, Spanish and Welsh and enjoys walking over the mountains of Southern Snowdonia.