Philip Spires Profile

I was born in Wakefield West Yorkshire in and was brought up in Sharslton a mining Village I went to London University Imperial and King s and then became a maths teacher working initially as a volunteer teacher in Migwani Kenya I then spent sixteen years in London specifically Balham and Islington In I left Britain for Maktab Teknik Sultan Saiful Rizal in Brunei and then Zayed University in Abu Dhabi the United Arab Emirates My wife and I currently live in La Nucia just kilometres from Benidorm on the Costa Blanca I have always been interested in the relationship between nature and nurture within nature birthright and experience Themes of culture and identity and their relation to economic roles and social experience underpin my writing What we are born into relates to what we become but we are rarely in control of our own destiny What others do how we approach friends and foes our interests and intellects and the way we choose to earn a living all of these shape us into what we become It may be that culture is the sum of all assumptions that others make on our behalf whereas identity represents our reactions to them Just a thought I did a PhD on the effects of education in economic development in the Philippines My aim was to relate educational experience to culture and identity particularly in the area of the adoption of personal attitudes and values and how they then relate to desired and realised economic roles It was far too ambitious and occupied nearly a decade of my spare time But I am very glad I did it and offer the deepest thanks to those who assisted and supervised These days I am pretty much retired I did a few years teaching in

music, alfas de pi classical music society, reading, politics, international development, writing (of course), travel, cooking, reading