I live in Truro, Cornwall, England, with my third wife Victoria, a dog and two cats. My first marriage, with Maureen, ended in divorce. I have two children from this marriage. Caitlin, a chiropracter, lives with her partner and two children in St. Ives, Cornwall; a third child, her firstborn, died following a drowning accident. My elder son, Sean, is a novelist and journalist, and lives in London. His second novel, Kissing England, was published in 2000. My second marriage, to Denise -- a union of over thirty years -- ended with her death from cancer in 1998. My son from this marriage, Ross, is a graduate in journalism from Humber College, Toronto. He is married to a Canadian, and has three step-children.

Life, to date:

1935: I was born in a tin-mining village of west Cornwall, in the southwest of England.
1937-49: Lived in a bungalow that my father, a plasterer, built.
1949: Immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in the wake of my sister, who had married an Australian airman she had met in the war.
1951: Returned to share the family-house in Cornwall.
1953: Began my compulsory military service, during which I learnt Russian.
1955-59: New College, Oxford, reading English, B.A. degree, first class honours.
1958: Married Maureen Skewes.
1960: Death of my father.
1960: Birth of daughter, Caitlin.
1959-63: English teacher at Teignmouth Grammar School, Devon. I also began to write poetry. 1963-78: Lecturer in English at Hereford College of Education. Head of department for last two years.
1963: Birth of son, Sean.
1975: Death of my mother.
mid-1970s: Divorced Maureen, married Denise Aldred.
1976: I began writing my first novel.
1977: Birth of son, Ross.
1979: Became a full-time writer.
1981: My third novel, The White Hotel, became an international best-seller.
1987: Moved back to Cornwall.
1989: Concluded Russian Nights, a quintet of novels, with Lying Together.
1990s: Wrote a number of novels (4), and published a collection of poems. Also completed a biography on Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
1998: Second wife, Denise, died of cancer.
1999: Married Victoria Field.
2000: Novella, Charlotte, published.
2000 and beyond: Life is busy...

Don, tutoring a student, at his
home in Cornwall.

LOVES

Apricot wine, brandy and Broadway musicals, Cornwall and cricket and comedians and cigarettes, dreams, erotica and eyes, feisty but feminine females, graciousness, hymnsinging by Cornish or Russian choirs, Italy, jokes, kissing, lying together, mysteries and movies, news, olden days and styles, pasties, Queen Elizabeth I, rugby, stockings and suspenders, travel, the unconscious, Vermeer, women and wit and wine, X.J. Kennedy's poem Nude descending a staircase, yin and yang, the film Zulu.

HATES

Atheists, boobs (the word), cheese, dancing I'm asked to join in, extremists and Europhiles, folksongs and feminists, gushing and garrulousness, hymns sung by Anglican choirs, -isms and intellectuals, jeans, kissing cheeks, luvvies, Marxists and milk, nipples (mine) being touched, oily TV personalities, political correctness and pomposity, quangos, racing (horse-), spiders and snakes, trousers on women, uxoriousness, vanity, Wagner, Xmas (commercialised), yoghurt and yodelling, zealots.