Mike Atherton is a retired army nurse, now an author living in the idyllic countryside near Doncaster. He is a northern lad, raised from a strong military family background. His grandfathers, father and brother all served in the army. His mother was a nurse. Mike joined the Army as a trainee nurse in 1978.
After a long and eventful career in the army as a military nurse specialising in orthopaedics, Mike retired from the army in 2004 to settle down with his wife and their family of Bernese mountain dogs.
Mike’s passion for the Great War started at an early age. His middle name follows a family tradition of naming the boys after great uncles who served in WW1. He was given the middle name Charles after his Great Uncle who fell in Flanders in 1915.
Writing his first novel, The Long Shot in 2014 came as much as a surprise to him as to those around him. The sequel, A Shot From The Shadows was released in 2016. An Echo In Time is a prequel completing the trilogy. Mike has recently published Dust In The Blood set in the coal mines of Lancashire in 1919. His next book Lochnagarreturns to the dark, murky, and often deadly tunnels of WW1.