Born in Patna, India and moved to the UK age 5, where my father became a noted orthopaedic surgeon and my mother a school teacher and now an active poet. Grew up in Wales and from age 9 in Hampstead, London where I live now with my wife, a pure mathematician in her own right, and two children. I have wanted to be a theoretical physicist since seeing a book on Compton rays in my local library age 9, that is I have dedicated my life to understanding the true nature of things. I spent 14 years in total at Cambridge University (of which my undergraduate salad days the most life-forming) and 7 years at Harvard University (of which 5 my PhD also transforming). My quest eventually led me to Queen Mary, deep into pure mathematics and its subtle interplay with physics ... see Chapter 2 of my book On Space and Time.