ALWYN JAMES spent his childhood and schooldays in the Welsh valley town of Tredegar. After two dramatic changes of scenery, firstly three years at Cambridge University in the flat landscape of East Anglia and then ten years as editor of an industrial magazine in London, he arrived in 1970, almost by accident, in Scotland. In the years since then, his career has been all about communication, as editor, writer, press officer and internal publications chief, the last two with The Royal Bank of Sotland.
An unapologetic dilettante, he has, in addition to his books, written articles in the Scottish press on subjects as diverse as Enrico Caruso and Scottish banknotes, the explorer Alexander Mackenzie and Welsh rugby. Within the Royal Bank he is better known in a Jekyll and Hyde combination - jovial TV presenter and sadistic setter of quizzes. His flurry of writing since semi-retirement from the bank has produced a film script of Caruso's last days, a TV adaptation of a Victorian tear-jerker, a romantic crime novel - and boxes of rejection slips.
He and his wife Jean, the inspiration behind Scottish Roots, have now established something of a dynasty in Edinburgh, with daughters-in-law and grandchildren swelling the numbers carrying on the Tredegar James name to nine, although two sons have fled the nest to Bavaria and Sweden.