Nicholas Hancock was born in Sussex in 1933 but spent most of his youth in a Dickensian school owned by his mother in rural Wiltshire. From his 17th to 19th year he was a  peón or gaucho in Uruguay. After his National Service, he worked, among other things, on a farm, in a shoulder pad factory and on a seiner on the North Sea before  studying at the Sorbonne in 1954-55. He taught in various schools while graduating in foreign languages before meeting his South African wife. They emigrated to Canada  where they brought up their three sons and where Nicholas was first Head Teacher on a remote northern island before taking up a high school post in Trois-Rivières, where  he obtained his MA at the francophone university.

Having divorced, he returned to England after 22 years abroad, settling in Liverpool. In 1989 his novel La Béatification  was published in French Canada. In 1990-91 Nicholas cycled extensively in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, being in Petra for the outbreak of the Gulf War and  meeting his future wife in a Prague pastry shop. In 1998 Phénix published his French poetry in the collection Choses tristes while in the following year the National Poetry  Foundation published some of his English poems in Window for a Monad.

His most commercially successful novel:Daniel and Miriam was recently published by Acorn Publications and is available from most bookshops.