Dr Gervase Phinn is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author, poet, educational consultant and visiting professor of education. For fourteen years he taught in a range of schools, then acted as General Adviser for Language Development in Rotherham before moving on to North Yorkshire, where he spent ten years as a school inspector - time that has provided much source material for his books. He has four grown up children and four grandchildren and lives near Doncaster. Visit Gervase's website, www.gervase-phinn.com.

For those of us of a certain age, Out of the Woods but not Over the Hill is a wonderfully cheering title. When Gervase Phinn receives his peerage for services to good-heartedness, this will be the motto on his coat of arms: "Ex silvis sed non supra montem."... This entertaining and moving homework earns a good few merit marks. Gervase Phinn is not going downhill yet, by a long chalk on a blackboard