Reginald Wilson was born in 1923, the third of five children. He attended Beal Grammar School, Ilford, and joined the Royal Air Force in 1941, serving in Bomber Command as a navigator. Shot down in 1944 over Berlin, he spent the rest of the war as a POW. Reg had a long and successful career with Unilever, eventually becoming an International Management Consultant. He married Barbara Spencer in 1954. They have three children and eight grandchildren, and now live in Christchurch, Dorset. Janet Hughes, Reginald Wilson's elder daughter, was born in Chigwell, Essex, in 1958, and was educated at Woodford County High School and the Universities of Southampton and Reading. She became a secondary school teacher of French and German, and now enjoys one-to-one teaching, translation, photography, music and writing. She is married to David Hughes, and they have two grown up children, Katherine and Christopher. They live in Farnham, Surrey.