Ray Stone is an accomplished author with two published works to his name. Born just outside London in 1946, he grew up in post war Britain during a period of depression and ration books, bombed out housing and BBC radio. At school he won a writing competition at the age of eleven and later in his teens went on to widen his interest in the arts by having no fewer than four self-developed monochrome photos hung in the ESSEX Worldwide Salon of Photography competition in his home town of Southend on Sea.
At the age of eighteen he began writing poetry and lyrics whilst studying at college. Two years later he was working in theatre as a technician and worked with many orchestras' and artists including the London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Mantovani, The Doyle Carte Opera Company, Harlequin Ballet, Joan Baez, Jimmy Hendrix, Oscar Peterson and worked on local shows such as My Fair Lady, Camelot and West Side Story.
His poetry won him a first place in 1998 in an international internet poetry competition with ‘An Angry Silence.’ Moving to Colchester in the same year he wrote a full page article about the historical significance of the locale and was published with a by-line in the local press. Whilst writing his first novel he returned to writing lyrics and teamed up with a local composer. Together they produced and recorded five blues numbers.
His novel, ‘THE TROJAN TOWERS,’ was published in 2005. A second political thriller, ‘ISIA’S SECRET,’ has just been published. Raymond's favourite authors are Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Neville Shute, Alistair Maclean, C.S.Forrester, Len Deighton, Daniel Silva, Ernest Hemingway - and the list goes on.
Raymond has lived in and around London's colourful EastEnd and the café sets of Westminster and Kensington. Rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous-and infamous-he has acquired a unique insight into the lives of both criminal and upper classes that give his works a believable realism. He moved to the USA in 2003 and married. He has since retired from a successful landscape design business and now lives on Malta with his wife and fellow author, Mrellan Harahan.
