Ron Berry was born in 1920 in Blaencwm in the Rhondda Valley, and he worked as a miner from the age of fourteen. Although he served in both the Army and the Merchant Navy in the Second World War, his consistent attitude to all authority was to absent himself from it. He was a gifted sportsman who had played for Swansea Town, and was an occasional boxer, but it was a year in adult education at Coleg Harlech in the early 1950s that released him from sporadic casual work to concentrate on writing.
Against all odds he never flagged in this determined pursuit.In addition to So Long, Hector Bebb, he published four works of fiction, including Travelling Loaded (1963); The Full-Time Amateur (1966); Flame and Slag (1968), and This Bygone (1996).
