'We don't always choose the people we live with. Some of them are determined to keep us in our place, and others simply don't know how to let us go, to be the person we naturally are.'

Percy Stewart's first published poem addressed this issue in a school magazine in the late sixties. Inspired by a week spent watching the sea and wildlife near Durdle Door on the Dorset coast, it still holds true fifty-five years later.

'As I child I saw some things very clearly indeed, but lacked the courage and experience which would have made me stand my ground. It was of no special value as poetry, but certainly an accurate prediction.

'Since then I have worked with thousands of children and adults. Any teacher, parent, grandparent or other 'responsible adult' would do well to listen to what the children in their care have to say, because amongst the nonsense, something might be the product of a great deal of quiet, independent thought.'

Before going to Cambridge in '76, his first few months in the Pyrenees confirmed Percy Stewart's gut feeling that he should spend his whole life writing about the mountains and their wildlife.

'Back in England, it took only a few jealous, vindictive words to put me off the natural, instinctive trail which leads memory and imagination across a virgin page.'

Four years and many formative experiences later he returned to December-bound England, from an earthquake-relief mission in southern Italy. His head was bursting with disturbing images and dramatic ideas for his first stage-play.

'Someone else's jealousy certainly didn't stop me writing, but this took other directions as circumstances arose and changed.  From the eighties onwards I had only thought in terms of non-fiction and children's stories, and adult fiction didn't seriously occur to me again until recently.'

Since that first exploration of the Pyrenees, a succession of tangled pathways has had to be followed.  For nearly five decades the old nickname, ‘Percy’, seemed long-forgotten.

For anyone who survives them, thorny paths may eventually prove to be fruitful, in unexpected ways.

'Even though I had loved the whole make-believe world of working in a theatre for two years in the mid-seventies, writing a drama for the stage was clearly not my natural talent. That play-script seemed forced and false, so I threw it away.

'Another piece, which earned me the offer of a job on a French newspaper, showed me that daily journalism was very definitely not my natural inclination.  For one thing, I didn't even read newspapers!'

'I now see that a film...or an illustrated article for a geographical magazine...would have been a better medium for conveying the horrors of that earthquake and its aftermath. One day, in another life, perhaps.

'There are so many awful things happening in the world, and so much fear, that I certainly don't need to write the script for yet another disaster-movie, however real its origins may have been in 1980.

'When Feed the Vultures has gone to press, I plan to take a break from adult novels and see where Jacques' journey has taken its writer. There will definitely be some art, some music, some writing, some lovely people and some wonderful wildlife.'

Researching Jacques' journey for Feeding the Vultures threw up some new ideas for children's stories, to add to a shortlist which goes back to the late eighties.

'One short, illustrated story will be about a bear, closely based on what actually happened high above the vast forest through which I had been walking alone for two weeks.

'The first extended children's story I wrote has a truly loveable character, a very brave young girl who goes on a long and dangerous journey. She was the essence of some children I was teaching at that time, in 1989. The children in that class loved the story and I promised them that one day I would finish it, so now is probably the time.

'However, there is also an illustrated story which originated in another class, in 2008. I would like to give the finished book to two Scottish children I know now, and to have it translated for two French children whose grandmother played a very important part in my life nearly fifty years ago. It would be so much nicer for them to have it while they are still children, rather than when they become grandparents!'