Ian was born in 1940 to elderly parents as World War 2 was getting started. Conscription ended as he left school, and he didn’t volunteer. In his adult life he became a teacher. This gave deep satisfaction, and he has continued to practice the art since 1964. His first collection ‘All They Will Call You’ was a response to teaching unaccompanied asylum-seeking children since 2016.

In his eighties as a son, a father, an ex-husband, a bereaved husband, he explores the silent foundations of that life in his new poetry collection, 'Did Love come off ration'.