All through late 2003 and the summer of 2004, Roderick and Brian worked together, and in 2005 Roderick finally self-published the first book in the Tunnels series, then known as The Highfield Mole. Roderick himself was fascinated by 'what lies beneath', and when he bought a sixteenth-century country house in Northamptonshire and was told that it was rumored to have a secret passage beneath it, he began to think about a character who would eventually become 'Will Burrows' in the Tunnels books. In 1824, Professor Buckland gave what is credited to be the first scientific lecture on the jaw bone of a dinosaur called the Megalosaurus, some twenty years before the word dinosaur itself was coined by Richard Owen. Blackmore and Matthew Arnold) was William Buckland, his great-great-grandfather, who is widely recognized to be one of the forefathers of geology. Amongst his ancestors (which include R.D. Roderick had always been interested in archaeology and palaeontology. They both found the process so rewarding that they decided they would continue the collaboration, and embarked on a book for younger readers, an idea first suggested by Roderick’s wife, Sophie. Their first project was a film screenplay for a crime thriller called 'Second Face'. He was now able to meet more regularly with his old university friend, Brian Williams, and in 2003, they decided to start working together. In 2001, after a nine-year stretch with an investment bank, Roderick was made redundant, something that he has since described as a blessing in disguise. Here he worked in corporate finance, specializing in private equity transactions. For several years he wrote music and played in a number of bands, and also toyed with the idea of getting into films (he was employed briefly by George Harrison’s Handmade Films), but eventually ended up in the City. They became friends in the summer of 1980, and kept in touch until, some twenty-three years later, they finally began to cooperate on their writing.Īfter an unsuccessful attempt to transfer to medical school to train as a doctor, Roderick had graduated from University College Londonin 1983 without any idea of what career he wanted to follow.

It was here that he met his future collaborator on the Tunnels series of books, Brian Williams, who was at the Slade School of Fine Art. He went on to public school at Oundle, and then attended University College, London, where he read biology (specializing in genetics). Chronically shy throughout his childhood, he sought refuge in drawing and writing, and whilst at the Hall School, Hampstead, he had his first short story published in the school magazine, at the age of twelve. Biography īorn in November 1960, Roderick grew up in Highgate, North London. Roderick Gordon (born November 1960) is the author of Tunnels, a bestselling children's book and Summerhouse Land.

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