Born and educated in Tavistock, Devon, Ted Sherrell has had an interesting and diverse working career; past work including being a civil servant, a fireman, factory worker and insurance agent. But it is his intimate knowledge of farming and rural life in Devon that readers have come to love, and this is something deep-rooted in Ted Sherrell's life.From his early years as a farmer's son he has worked and been around the farming community all his life, and now works part-time as a business adviser exclusively dealing with farms in the South West.Fire and the Phoenix is his seventh novel written on Devonshire rural life. Whilst this novel has a particularly up-to-date theme, collectively his work covers the vast change he has seen in farming over the past fifty-five years.As well as his writing career, both as a novelist and a freelance journalist, Ted Sherrell has for many years been involved in local government as a member of Tavistock Town Council and West Devon Borough Council. He is also a magistrate and regularly sits on the Plymouth bench.