“Not famous for being relevant,” according to his website, Simon Parke was a priest in the Church of England for 20 years.

He worked for three years in a supermarket, where he stacked shelves, worked on the tills, filled in on the bakery, chaired the shop union and had a very good laugh and cry with his colleagues. He has now left, with both sadness and gratitude, to risk the freelance adventure.

His most recent books are The Beautiful Life, published by Bloomsbury, and Another Bloody Retreat.

Simon has been writing professionally for 25 years. He started in the dismantling business of satire, producing scripts for TV and radio, including Spitting Image. He won a Sony radio award for his work on Simon Mayo’s Big Holy One. He has written a trilogy of desert novellas called Desert Depths, Desert Ascent and Desert Child. These follow the fortunes of the struggling Abbot Peter in the monastery of St James-the-Less.

Simon has also created a different sort of trilogy, three small books of pungent, funny, sharp, sad, hopeful meditations called One Minute Mystic, The Learning of Love and Origins. "Haiku for urban dwellers," someone called them, though a farmer greatly enjoyed them too. These were followed by a controversial reflection on family and childhood, through the dark and surprising lense of Jesus’ experiences, called Forsaking the Family. Simon runs and leads retreats, meets with people looking for a new way in their life, and follows the beautiful game. He also prefers to deal with the puppeteer within rather than the puppet without.