‘I suppose most people would see the ability to tell a story as a talent to entertain, but where I was born and raised, being able to spin a yarn was considered an asset of survival and, at times, it became a necessity…’ he said.Harry was born in 1931, in Leroy Street, a back street off the Tower Bridge Road, the second child of Annie and Henry Bowling. His older sister Gladys died of meningitis before her second birthday. Harry’s grandfather worked at a transport yard as a carman-horsekeeper. He used to take Harry there to watch him and to pat the horses. He spent his youth hanging around the Tower Bridge Road market or hunting through Borough Market, a wholesale fruit and veg market near London Bridge, exploring the docklands and wharves, and swimming in the Thames. Harry’s first contact with books began at the local library encouraged by his father, who was permanently disabled after being wounded during the First World War. Henry Bowling was often unemployed and struggled to support the family. Harry was only ten when the Second World War broke out. He could remember the day when Surrey Docks was bombed. His father helped him with his early education and he and his younger brother passed scholarships to Bermondsey Central School. He left the school at the age of 14 to help the family income by working at a riverside provision merchant as an office boy.Only when his own children began to ask questions about the war, did Harry realise how many stories he had to tell. He started gathering scribbles and notes and wrote his first book. It was a factual account of the war and Harry realised it would probably have only a limited readership. He became aware that historical fiction was very popular and that there was no one writing about the East End of London, and the war, at that time. In his fifties, he was given early retirement from his job as a brewery driver-drayman, and was at last able to devote his time to writing.He became known as ‘the King of Cockney sagas’, and he wrote eighteen bestselling novels of London life.
