Stanley Wilson

Born in Middlesbrough, Stanley Wilson settled in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, after travelling the country in the course of his forty years' service in HM Customs and Excise. His love of the sea and an affinity with seafarers is apparent in his writings which include hundreds of short stories and features appearing in magazines, newspapers and radio in the United Kingdom and overseas. A selection of these stories was published in The Way of the Sea and Other Stories, of which Lord Ted Willis wrote, "A superb collection... Stanley Wilson is that rare creature, a craftsman whose stories have a reality that locks them in the memory like a good tune."

The hazardous voyage of the First Fleet and the horrendous sufferings of the convicts made an early impression upon him and on retirement he was able to research those years in depth leading to his writing Leave the Gallows Hungry - First Fleet to Australia. He also saw the novel as a tribute to Arthur Phillip who commanded the fleet and laid the foundations of Australia in Sydney Cove as its first Governor.