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John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of mixed Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with her daughter upon the death of her Aldershot-based husband) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot, Hants and, with an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother upon the death and repatriation of his ethnically-protective grandmother, Carshalton, Surrey. Shortly after leaving high school in pre-GCSE era 1970 with an assortment of CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved to London and went on, via two short-lived jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, where he eventually became responsible for booking ABRSM examination venues throughout the British Isles. After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End but, due to a combination of factors, quit the Associated Board in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which, despite a brief spell as a computer-cum-office-skills tutor at Hornsey YMCA in the late 1980s and early '90s, he has doggedly continued with ever since.

John O'Loughlin

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