Bill Proctor

Bill Proctor is the son of a Viking from Lincolnshire and the umpteenth daughter of a Scottish Victorian engineer, born by the railroad track in Chile and only just managing to avoid being named after a lighthouse. He was a chorister at Bristol Cathedral School and went on to Keele University, where he was the first full-time president of the Students Union. During his five years in that rural Staffordshire idyll he studied Political Institutions and English language & literature, but also...See more

Bill Proctor is the son of a Viking from Lincolnshire and the umpteenth daughter of a Scottish Victorian engineer, born by the railroad track in Chile and only just managing to avoid being named after a lighthouse. He was a chorister at Bristol Cathedral School and went on to Keele University, where he was the first full-time president of the Students Union. During his five years in that rural Staffordshire idyll he studied Political Institutions and English language & literature, but also managed three years of Physics and dabbled in French, Russian and Moral Philosophy (of which he was probably most in need) as well as a little learning from all the other disciplines. From the age of thirteen he spent his spare time as a copy boy and eventually cub reporter on the Bristol Evening Post of blessed memory, where for a number of summers he reigned supreme as Golden Wedding and Flower Show King. After graduation he briefly taught politics at Manchester University, but most of his working life was spent in Westminster. He attempted to write a novel based on his experiences in Grenada, but the draft was destroyed by exploding cartons of long-life orange. He retired in 2004 as Clerk of the Journals. He has a remarkably patient wife. For the last half-century or so he has lived in Chislehurst - which sounds like rural Kent but is really south-east suburban London. See less