Richard Stephenson Winter

Richard Winter was born in Carlisle, Cumbria in 1968 and grew up in Northumberland. He trained as an actor and in business studies before embarking on a twenty year on / off non-career in the Army, serving in both the Territorial and Regular Army. He was awarded the Territorial Decoration in 2012 and finally retired in January 2013 as a Major. When not serving as an ambivalent soldier, "RSW" has spent time variously travelling, often working as an international DJ, playing, drinking and "generally making a scene" in various places from Cannes and Monte Carlo to Beirut and Syria. He was expelled from his DJ residence in Abu Dhabi following his creation of a very popular hip hop night where everyone danced but no-one bought drinks. His sense of humour lent itself to a foray into comedy, though his physically menacing presence and disinclination to indulge hecklers led to friend and comedy mentor Steffen Peddie remarking "You were okay till you threatened them." Collaborations in Cambridge with writers and comedians from the Cambridge Footlights resulted in his return to acting after a gap of over two decades, in Daniel Henry Kaes' Harry Porter Prize Nominated "It's Complicated" in the London production in Covent Garden in 2012. A life-long fan of comedian Tony Hancock, Richard got the idea for "The Towers" from the way "the lad himself" styled his own comic creation - not only casting himself in the central role and using his own name (adding the Stephenson - his middle name - as it would "use up more bulbs") but by alluding to a (fictitious) aristocratic childhood with no basis in fact. Such was his deadpan explanation of this bare faced lie, coupled with the fact that many of his Army colleagues addressed him as "Lord Morpeth" - a name he uses in The Towers to this day, that newer members of his Regiment would believe that his blood did in fact run blue and were somewhat disappointed to learn that they did not have a reluctant peer in their midst. Richard is also the second cousin of Golden Globe, Bafta and Academy Award winning screen writer Simon Beaufoy. Richard has been a keen diarist for many years but now focuses on his writing for self publishing, in part to help fund his life as "a struggling actor. "The Towers" began as a way of making social media more interesting, but his characterisation of himself living at an inexplicable country house along with rock stars, actors and other quirky aristocratic characters was so popular that is eventually became his first eBook "A Thirsty Thursday At The Towers" which he has now followed with his first Towers novella "A Twist Of Fete At The Towers." "The message of 'The Towers'" he says "is that everyone has weaknesses, whether it is vanity, greed or whatever, and we should accept people as flawed and try to be kind." Richard is unmarried and has no children. He divides his time between London (when he is acting) and (Leafy) Northumberland when he is writing.