Derek Hansen

Derek was born in London in June 1944 and at the age of four he convinced his parents to emigrate to Auckland, where he lived for the next sixteen years. His writing talent took him to London in the sixties where his quirky style and commercial instincts brought a rapid rise through the ranks to the country s top advertising agency. Derek was lured to Australia and spent the next twenty-five years doing ads and wishing he was writing novels instead.

One day over lunch Derek had the bright idea of breaking his fiction manuscript down into bite-sized pieces and so the idea for the Lunch series was born. LUNCH WITH THE GENERALS became an instant bestseller in Australasia and was sold into Britain, Scandinavia, France and Germany. His later novel, SOLE SURVIVOR, was also a bestseller and has been reprinted many times. Derek has written a further five novels and three collections of short stories.

He is married, has two grown-up children and lives in Avalon on Pittwater, with some time spent in Doonan on Queensland s Sunshine Coast. On the whole, the fishing is better in Pittwater.