Gandolfi was born in London in 1933. He has one brother, Antony older by two years. Their father's death in 1938 and being sent for safe keeping to South Africa during World War II were major impacts on his childhood.

I'm the Cop

The author's maternal grandfather F.S. Oliver

He inherited his writing genes from is maternal grandfather, the political philosopher and historian F.S.Oliver (Alexander Hamilton, The Endless Adventure, Anvils of War). In refusing to conform, Gandolfi follows an English Recusant family's tradition.

He describes himself as a Fat Old Toad. Others describe Gandolfi as a Hemingway Look-a-Like. Gandolfi claims as coincidence those years that mirror the Hemingway pattern. Employed in his early twenties in Kenya, Somalia and the Ogedan, Gandolfi was more aware of Wilfred Thesiger's footsteps.

His early friendship with the co directors of Performance, Nick Roeg and Donald Cammell (with whom Gandolfi shared a London studio while on leave from Africa) first introduced him to the wider world of the arts and it was actor, Anthony Quail, who prodded Gandolfi into writing of his experiences with Desert Locust Survey (Even With The Shutters Closed).

Drawing of the author by Donald Cammell, 1959.

Further encouragement came later from two friends of Gandolfi's Ibiza years, Cliff Irving and the science-fiction writer, Robert Sheckley.

Robert Sheckley

Gandolfi's early period in the desert may explain an addiction to the sea and sailing. He has sailed by dhow across the Red Sea, run a trading schooner on the East African coast and was employed as a yacht skipper in the Mediterranean. Most pleasurable was a 1960s cruise through the greek islands on a 5 meter caique bought on Ithaca for £100.

Assos, Cephalonia, base for his cruise and where he began writing his first book

The author

Gandolfi claims that yachts of more than a minimum size create a barrier of wealth that isolates those on board from local communities while marinas are yachtsmen's ghettos. He believes the modern inflatable to be the perfect boat for touring and exploration, and for his sporting passion: salt water fly fishing - a sport in which he has been encouraged by his wife, Bernadette, as it keeps him out of the house.

Gandolfi has travelled widely through the East and the Americas and has lived for periods in a variety of countries and cultures.

First time my mother had ridden pillion since 1914, Sri Lanka

Bernadette, Paris.

Gandolfi's partner of twenty five years, Bernadette is a designer and tailor of bespoke luggage for an individualistic clientele, many of whom are in the entertainment industry: Helen Bonham-Carter, Linda Hamilton, Christopher Lee, Gene Wilder...

Simon Gandolfi discussing Bernadette's luggage with a respected customer at Burleigh Horse Trials, 1991.

Jed out hunting with one of Bernadette's bags

Bernadette and Gandolfi have two children, Joshua and Jedediah. While Bernadette concentrated on her luggage buisness in the early Nineties, Gandolfi moved with the boys to the Dominican Republic, renting a beach-front house in a small village notorious as a home for heavy local gangsters (cheap rentals) then settled in Cuba where Josh and Jed attended State primary school while Bernadette became the world expert on the vagaries of Cuba's airline.

Beach-front house, Dominican Republic.

Jed receiving his scarf at the State primary school in Cuba

The Gandolfis returned to England for the completion of the boys' schooling. They now live in an idealic cottage that faces across a village cricket field at the foot of the Malvern hills in Herefordshire. Gandolfi has two further sons by his first marriage, the eldest, Antony, lives in London with his partner, the prominent architectural photographer Sarah Duncan and provides a base for Gandolfi on his visits to the city.

The author's son Antony

Gandolfi also visits with his adopted daughter, Anya, in up-state New York.

But the next step is...