Stephen Harper was born in Monmouthshire and followed two brothers (both of whom were killed) into the RAF in 1943. Becoming redundant for further pilot training in 1944 he transferred to the Royal Navy as coder aboard the destroyer HMS Petard in the East Indies Fleet during the closing months of the war against Japan.

He began his journalistic career in Leicester, where he went to school, worked briefly on the Liverpool Daily Post before joining the Daily Express in 1950. He began his foreign based career in New Delhi in 1956, reported on the first ever UN mission to the Congo; the early space missions and the Cuban missile crisis from Moscow; three Arab-Israeli wars; two wars between India and Pakistan; wars in Laos, Cambodia and most major clashes in Vietnam from 1960 to the fall of Saigon in 1975; the 1968 revolution in Baghdad, and revolutions in Libya and Ethiopia; many Middle East coups; the last one in South Korea. He ended his newspaper career as chief foreign correspondent when the broad-sheet Daily Express went tabloid. He worked subsequently for the BBC radio news and on Parliamentary staff.

He wrote his first novel while still a foreign correspondent. His books are all based on his wide experience as airman, sailor and journalist. Stephen Harper died October 10th 2007 in Surrey, England.