Born Ian Peter Hornsby on the 25th of August 1964, the youngest of four children into a working class family living in Leigh Park, Portsmouth, England (the largest council housing estate in Europe at that time). I left school in 1980 without any qualifications or the ability to either read or write; I was pretty much the expected product of a second rate, failing education system delivered to working class factory fodder in Britain in the nineteen seventies.

I served as an apprentice carpenter for four years and then spent the next six years or so working as a Coach-builder, Boat-builder and kitchen fitter. I soon became bored with a life of alienated exploitation and commodity fetishism and began to teach myself to read and write, slowly overcoming my dyslexia. Not long after mastering 'Spot the Dog goes to the Farm' I discovered Robert M. Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and although it sounds like a cliché the book change my life.

I returned to education and eventually got my degree in English and the arts from Southampton University in 1994. I have worked as a lecture at Chichester University since 1996 and am currently working on several projects involving among other things, the link between contemporary French thought, Anarchy and Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality. I still live in Leigh Park with my Fifteen-year-old son and good friend Tim.

I would welcome any comments from your readers on the subject of my thesis and although I am extremely busy writing, lecturing and single parenting, I'll try my best to answer any correspondence, ianhornsby@easynet.co.uk.