AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Publishing Agent sought for my book:

‘A CIRCLE OF GUNS’™©

Please E mail me at: alangerard.horton@ntlworld.com

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"I had one shark attack and two near misses in three weeks which was pushing my luck a bit!"

Reading about action man Alan Horton would make ordinary peoples lives seem tame. As he relates tales from his colourful past you get the impression he has often diced with death and only survived by the skin of his teeth. Yet 41-year old Alan is quite nonchalant about his alarming experiences, which range from swimming in shark infested seas to narrowly escaping a hand grenade in Aden.

"I prefer not to think about the dangers," he said, with a casual shrug.

(Extract from The Norfolk & Suffolk Journal, February 3, 1984. Alan Horton talks to Jane Oddy about his life of adventure)

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This is the exciting autobiography of a man whose life has been full of adventure, almost from infancy. His fascination with firearms of all kinds, from which the book derives its title, as well as his rapport with animals, especially dogs and horses, started early in his childhood, as did a love of water sports, including sailing, water skiing and windsurfing. However, the opportunity to learn deep water diving came after he had joined the RAF and was sent to Libya, where the Royal Engineers had a diving club in Tripoli. The young Alan spent an eventful but enjoyable three years there before being posted back to England.

Altogether, he spent nearly nine years in the RAF Police, including nine months in Aden shortly after his marriage, when he narrowly escaped from a hand grenade, a mortar attack and a shooting. Once discharged he put his diving skills to good use, joining a commercial diving company as a professional air diver, a career which took him from the North Sea to Northern and Southern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Ghana and eventually Nigeria, where he remained until 1987.

It is on this expatriate period that the book primarily focuses and there are thrills aplenty. Whether describing his encounters with electric fish, crocodiles and sharks, wild ‘parties’ with his fellow divers, stirring ceremonies with native tribesmen or joyful reunions with his wife and children, the author always conveys his enormous zest for life, sense of fun and almost total lack of concern for the many dangers inherent in his chosen lifestyle. In spite of this nonchalance, which prompted a local journalist to refer to him as ‘action man’, Alan is clearly not just an insensitive macho type incapable of showing any emotion.

There are deep feelings apparent in the chapters dealing with accidental drowning death of his long-time friend and fellow diver, Steve, the desperate dash home to be at his mother’s bedside before she died of cancer, and, equally deep but of a much happier nature, his joy at the birth of his children and the strength of his relationship with his wife.

The book is an enthralling story, rushing the reader from one hair raising experience to another with a few good laughs in between, all recounted in racy conversational style which makes it very easy to read and very hard to put down.