The Author

Maurice Feldman was born in Dublin, Ireland on 8th August 1942 and has a brother and sister still living in Dublin. His early education was at Rathgar National Primary School and Stratford College Secondary School, which was founded by his mother.

As a student, he used to write serious editorials and satirical articles for communal and college magazines and comedy sketches for local theatre. He studied Economics,Commerce and French at Trinity College Dublin, and on finishing University in 1964, with BA BComm degrees, ran Metal Spinners Ltd., a factory manufacturing Aluminium and Copper Pots, Pans and Electric Kettles. The factory was in a small township called Newtownmountkennedy in Co. Wicklow, about 35 kms from Dublin. He married Barbara in 1973 and left Metal Spinners a year later when it was taken over by a large UK public company. By then, there were about 100 workers and its products were being sold to the UK, Europe and Australia.

In 1979 Maurice and Barbara set up their own factory in Dublin, manufacturing Sachets of Sugar, Salt, Pepper and non Dairy Creamer. They also made plastic Cocktail Stirs (swizzle sticks) on a minor scale. The sachet business was sold in the late 1980's and the Cocktail Stirs were developed into their major activity, selling all over Europe and Scandinavia. When their two sons Daniel and Jonathan graduated from UK universities they left Ireland for London in 2003, where Barbara had been establishing a packaging distribution business.

On moving to London Maurice decided to take up writing full time and opted to keep taking writing courses until something came up that he felt he could work on. He took a series of ten week writing courses in City Lit, Covent Garden - Creative Writing, Comedy Scripts and Journalism. As a class exercise in Journalism he had written a piece called Alice in Euroland. When some months later he read of the suicide of Dimitris Christoulas in Athens he felt that the note Mr. Christoulas left behind portrayed the EU in a different and original light and decided to develop this further as a book.