John James O'Loughlin is a north-London-based Irish author who was born in Galway, the Republic of Ireland, to an English-born mother of Irish descent and an Irish father and, having been removed from his homeland at the tender age of 2ÂŊ by the maternal side of his family, including his grandmother, who were unable to remain in Galway, grew up first in Hampshire and then in Surrey, in south-eastern England, where he attended a variety of state schools. Most of his adult life has been spent at different addresses in the London Borough of Haringey, north of the River Thames, to which he moved â rather reluctantly â from Surrey in 1974, and all but a few of his books have been written there, the majority of which, like this one, are of an intensely philosophical not to say metaphysical and even religious character. Â