Paul Grace

Paul Grace has a BA (Hons) in English from Curtin University and almost 20 years of experience as a bookseller and manager in general, technical and educational bookshops in Perth, Western Australia. Operation Hurricane: The story of Britain's first atomic test and the legacy that remains is his first book. Grace's reason for writing the book is personal: his late grandfather, Flight Lieutenant Ron Grace, was a Dakota pilot who flew security patrols around the islands before the test and 'coastal monitoring sorties' (looking for fallout on the mainland) afterwards. When Grace began researching his grandfather's role, he found that there were no full-length histories of Operation Hurricane written from an Australian perspective, while British accounts downplayed the dangers of radiation and excluded Australian participants. Eventually, it became clear that if he wanted to read an Australian book about Operation Hurricane, he would have to write it himself.