David Gordon Rose
David's first professional career was as a trumpet player. He was a 1965 founder member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Great Britain (NYJO) at the age of sixteen and was lead trumpet for its first three years. Early experience includes recording with The Nice and working with PJ Proby. He lived in Brussels from 1968 to 1970 touring Europe with Jess and James and an eight-piece soul band. He studied music at Reading University and spent the rest of the 1970s in the music business, involved (unfortunately, he says) with Punk Rock.
During the 80s and 90s he wrote and travelled extensively. His first major publication would have been a Reverse English Dictionary in 1989 but the Cambridge University Press/ Chambers co-publishing deal fell through. He was commissioned to write an Encyclopedia of the Millennium for an American academic publisher but withdrew it from publication in 1999. Three years in field marketing is the only time he has not been self-employed as author, photographer or musician.
A professional photographer from 2003 he has lately turned his attention again to travelling, writing and publishing. He is working on several large projects including an Encyclopedia of Messiahs and Millenarians, a Popular Encyclopaedia of Sex, and Secrets of Wedding Photography.
Rose MacFarlane
Rose's book Naked Nurse: My life in nursing will be available in e-book on 1 April.
 Neil W. Murphy
Neil is a Sheffield lad. Born in Charlotte Road he has lived all his life in this part of Yorkshire. Except for the four years he was an evacuee to County Cork between 1939 and 1943 and while getting his Wings at Cranwell in the 1950s.
He left the RAF to follow a family tradition of steel-making. His grandfather was a forgemaster for Cammell Laird who made his reputation with big stuff, including navy gun barrels. Grandfather was also involved in trouble-shooting a problem with rivets the owners were having with the SS Titanic, Neil says, but that’s another story. Neil also spent several years with the Probabation Service before becoming a practicing hypnotherapist.
His book, Neil's War, was written soon after his retirement. For something to do probably and also, as he says, to find answers to questions that had been bothering him for a while. He is working on a second book, Neil’s Peace, which we can't wait to see. There can't be many people coming up to Eighty taking up writing as another career, though it is of course, the new Sixty.
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