Meet Keith Wood

Let me tell you a little about the person talking to you today. This is a message from my heart.
 

I was born in Halifax in 1947, a working class lad, and I am proud of that and of everything that has come since. I spent my career serving the public, in environmental management, community safety and economic development, working alongside businesses large and small, the police and the National Health Service. I finished as an officer in Local Government.

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At 76, my wife died, after 56 years of putting up with me. I had to decide what to do with the time I have left on this earth.

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The answer was waiting in the archives. I have always loved the newspapers, court records and parish registers of the old North Country, full of ordinary people living through extraordinary times. Nobody was telling their stories. So at 77 I rose from the ashes as The Yorkshire Fenix and began to write them myself.

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I have never been abroad and never owned a passport. My whole life is Great Britain, and I love this island for all its faults. That is why my books ring true. I have walked the places I write about, and I have read what the people who lived there left behind.
 

I will never row an ocean for charity or walk from Land's End to John o' Groats. What I can do is write. So every penny of profit from my books helps support good causes in my local community.

When you read one of my novels, you step into a real past, and you help a young person build a real future. I can think of no better legacy.

I hope you will join me for my last hurrah. I wish you good health and happiness all your life.

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Keith Wood, The Yorkshire Fenix