Roderick Gordon is the author of the Tunnels series of books.
Born in 1960, Roderick grew up in Highgate, North London. Chronically shy throughout his childhood, he sought refuge in drawing and writing, and at the age of twelve had a short story about running away from home included in a school magazine. Studying biology and genetics at university, Roderick eventually graduated without any idea of what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. More by accident than anything else, he eventually ended up in the City, working in corporate finance.
In 2001, after a nine year stretch with an investment bank, Roderick was made redundant, something that he describes as a blessing in disguise. He was now able to meet more regularly with an old university friend, Brian Williams, and in 2003, they began a book for younger readers, a project first suggested by Roderick's wife, Sophie.
Roderick has always been interested in archaeology and palaeontology. His great-great-grandfather, William Buckland, gave in 1824 what is credited to be the first scientific lecture on a dinosaur called the Megalosaurus, some twenty years before the word dinosaur itself had been coined. The idea for the character of Will Burrows in the Tunnels books came to Roderick after he'd bought a sixteenth-century house in Northamptonshire, and learnt that it was rumoured to have a secret passage beneath it.
All through late 2003 and the summer of 2004, Roderick and Brian cooperated on a book, which Roderick finally self-published as The Highfield Mole in 2005. All the copies quickly sold out, attracting the attention of Barry Cunningham, J.K. Rowling's original publisher and founder of The Chicken House, a publisher of children's books. After a period of editing, Barry Cunningham republished The Highfield Mole in July 2007, re-titling it as Tunnels to reflect the fact that it had been changed from the original.
After intense media interest around its launch, Tunnels was published in forty different counties, achieving worldwide sales of more than a million copies, and both it and its sequel, Deeper, were New York Times Bestsellers in the US. Shortly after the publication of Tunnels, the film rights were purchased by the US production company Relativity Media, and shooting of the first film is expected to begin shortly with Vincenzo Natali as director. A manga of the book has also been released in Japan. Tunnels has been followed by further instalments in the saga; Deeper (2008), Freefall (2009), and this year, Closer.
Roderick lives in North Norfolk with his wife and two sons, but is known to sneak back to London for reasons of sanity.
