Clive Woolliscroft

Now more than halfway through his eighth decade, Clive Woolliscroft is retired and lives in Cheshire with his wife, Sue, and Cocker Spaniel, Bonnie.

Before retiring, Clive served as an Army Officer in Germany, worked as an International Money Market Trader in London, was a Management Consultant in Prague and Riga and practised as a Solicitor in London, Hertfordshire and Staffordshire.

Ever since Clive was commissioned to write a book to demystify the derivative financial products that emerged in the 1980s, his ambition has been to write a novel. That ambition was achieved more than thirty-five years later when Less Dreadful With Every Step was published in May 2023. One False Step is Clive's second novel.

The catalyst for the creation of Less Dreadful With Every Step was a visit made by Clive to his local churchyard searching for dead ancestors in pursuit of his hobby – genealogy – when he noticed a headstone remembering a young man ‘... lost in France in the Great War about 23 March 1918’. Clive researched the young man in question to discover that, whilst he was a native of Jarrow, he never once set foot in Cheshire. The seeds of the book were sown.

One False Step was prompted by an article about Mary Blandy – ‘the fair parricide’ who was hanged for poisoning her father on the 6th of April 1752. Clive felt that Mary's story would form the basis for a novel comprising a reimagining of the events leading to her execution. The seeds of another book were sown.