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Steve Shearwater
The author behind the pen-name of Steve Shearwater was born and raised in one of the quiet and beautiful valleys of the Lake District National Park in what was then the county of C...view moreThe author behind the pen-name of Steve Shearwater was born and raised in one of the quiet and beautiful valleys of the Lake District National Park in what was then the county of Cumberland, now Cumbria, in the very north west corner of England. In that remarkable setting, he enjoyed what can truly be called an idyllic rural childhood. At the age of 16, he was one of only four young people to be selected out of the year’s 115 applicants for places as police cadets in what was then Hull City Police, now Humberside, on the east coast of England. Much of the next three years was spent attending the city’s College of Commerce to gain police-related qualifications. However the cadetship also included industrial and community attachments, designed to let young cadets experience various aspects of ‘real life’. Of course, the other part of real life that cadets start to encounter occur when accompanying officers on patrol duty and seeing crime scenes, arrests, road crashes, injured people and death, up close – things which inevitably accelerate the process of simply growing up. At the time of transitioning from cadet to constable, ‘Steve’ chose to transfer back to his home county of Cumbria. By then, however, he had already realised that – at that time – there were about twenty times more road deaths than murders each year in Britain and because of that startling fact he decided to focus his career on traffic enforcement and safety rather than crime. (That ratio is now down from 20:1 to a mere 3:1, with road deaths down by about three-quarters in hard numbers – a huge success in which the British traffic police have played a major role.) After several years on routine patrol duties in various small towns, in three of the four geographic divisions within Cumbria Constabulary, ‘Steve’ joined what was then called the Traffic Department – nowadays the Roads Policing Unit – and took his career forwards in that field. In parallel to his working life, ‘Steve’ developed a deep and passionate interest in the history and culture of his home county, something which now adds tremendously to his writing about the area. His other interests include photography, wildlife, travel, and in earlier years mountaineering and mountain rescue. He has travelled very widely within Africa, India, North America, and Europe.view less