Longley, Peter: - Peter Longley was brought up in Beckenham, Kent and educated at Tonbridge before reading theology at Cambridge. From 1967-1977, he was the estate manager of Tullamaine Castle in Ireland that was American owned and took him to Georgia, USA, where in 1978 he went to sea as a ship's artist. Later, he became a cruise director with Royal Viking Line, and in 1989, joined Cunard as the cruise director of the Queen Elizabeth 2. Cruise ships took him all over the world in the 1980s and 1990s until he retired and became the horticultural interpreter of a large American Botanical Garden in Springfield, Missouri. He started writing books in 1978, and he returned to Beckenham and his roots in 2017.