Mick Rooney RA was brought up in Sutton, Surrey and London. He has lived in Italy and Spain and stayed in Holland, Morocco, Mexico, The Seychelles, Antigua and Romania. Rooney is the recipient of several prestigious awards and prizes and has work in many public and private collections including: The Royal Collection (Windsor), The Royal Academy of Art (London), De Beers Consolidated, The Gulbenkian Foundation, Towner Art Gallery (Eastbourne) and Deutsche Bank (London). He has lectured in many art colleges, and in the 1990s he became Head of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools. For the last 14 years he has lived and worked in Charlbury, North Oxfordshire. Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Mosquito Coast (1981) and Mr Bones: Twenty Stories (2014). His awards include the American Academy Arts & Letters Award for Literature, the Whitbread Prize and a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical society.