Midhurst Magazine: Issue 32, October 2020

Born in the industrial north of England in the post-war era of austerity and ration books, Harvey Tordoff earned his passport away from the back streets with a grammar school scholarship and a qualification as a Chartered Accountant. In his own words: "I married, we had a son, and then came the usual struggle involving hard work, risk, disappointment, achievement and adjustment, in my case culminating in an unexpected rags-to-riches story. "I became a successful businessman, travelling the world and providing financial expertise for complex deals of corporate acquisitions and mergers. As a company director on four continents I was also responsible for overseeing the operations of our high-tech operating subsidiaries. But at the age of 42 I turned my back on the financial rewards of the business world to write a spiritual book. "First came the years in the wilderness, or more correctly, years living in relative seclusion on the edge of a lake. My career had taken me to coffee plantations in the West Indies, a steel mill in the jungles of Central America, the Stock Exchange in London, The Pentagon in Washington, and large computer installations in a score of countries. Now my journey became one of self-discovery. Months spent restoring a neglected piece of Cumbrian woodland were interspersed with foreign trips: white-water rafting on the Zambezi; attending the Ceremony of the Tooth in Sri Lanka; seeing the living goddess Kumari in Kathmandu; climbing to the roof of The Potola in Lhasa; walking on the Great Wall of China. I joined two local Buddhist groups and had a short poem entitled Full Moon published in a Buddhist magazine. Then I began to write the book that felt like my life's work. "I first read Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine when I was still in my teens, and throughout my business years her unified concept of spiritual and physical evolution made more and more sense. It brought together philosophical and spiritual teachings from around the world, and Blavatsky claimed that most modern religions had a common source. The Secret Doctrine is dense, almost impenetrable, prose writing covering fifteen hundred pages with small print. The ideas within could do much to dispel the ignorance behind our abuse of the planet, its resources and its inhabitants, but very few people take the trouble to read it. I set out to re-package Blavatsky's ideas in a form which anyone could understand. O Lanoo! was published by Findhorn Press in 1999. "I emerged from lakeside seclusion to give talks on O Lanoo! (the word lanoo means a spiritual student, a seeker of truth) on the essential elements of theosophy: the unity of mankind; the workings of karma; the immortality of the human spirit; creation and evolution; and the relationship between space, matter and time. And I co-founded Energy4All, a not-for-profit organisation that helped communities build their own renewable energy projects, a practical example of theosophy's basic tenets: people coming together to work in harmony with the earth's resources and safe-guarding our children's future. "I retired again at 60, and we travelled some more to South America, Easter Island, Tahiti, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore. My wife (of 50 years) and I both had to cope with cancer diagnoses and our horizons shrank. Recently I volunteered for a charity known as The Midhurst Society. My title was Treasurer, but I soon found myself responsible for upgrading and maintaining the website and Facebook page. And now I am a co-editor of Midhurst Magazine. One day I might even retire again!"  

Born in London in 1937 Peter was evacuated to Midhurst in West Sussex. With his family he migrated to Adelaide, South Australia in 1951, where he still lives. His working life began in Australia as an electrical trades apprentice, merging into an academic career in Engineering from 1961. Upon gaining the BE (Hons) and ME at the University of Adelaide, with his wife and baby daughter, he moved to Warwick University for a PhD research period in the early 1960s. After a decade as an academic in geophysics at the University of New England, he returned to Adelaide as a Professor of Electronic Engineering. In 1986 he was awarded the DSc, in Engineering, by the University of Warwick. He took early retirement in 1998 to allow him to follow writing and handcrafts. He and Pat then spent five pleasant years in the Cotswolds near Oxford. Peter has always been attracted to non-fiction writing. His technical hands-on background led him to freelancing popular technical articles in the monthly magazine, Electronic Today International. Writing far away in Adelaide, Australia, has not been a problem; the Internet, and its email, provide most of what is needed today. He has visited Midhurst many times, the latest being in 2014 and 2015 to build up research on the Midhurst District during WW2. His interests have covered just about all handcrafts - with mixed successes. His 1958 electronic base-guitar was a failure; his classic decorated wrought iron balustrades received acclaim - outside of the family! He has constantly been building onto their homes to provide for their 6 children who now live in Adelaide, Dubai and Melbourne. Pat and he, now have 11 grandchildren.