Rob Chapman is currently the holder of a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at The University of Manchester. He was for a long time a freelance radio broadcaster with the BBC national network and a music journalist. His work has appeared in Mojo , The Times, The Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Uncut, Word and Jockey Slut. He is the author of Selling the Sixties: The Pirates and Pop Music Radio (1992), The Vinyl Junkyard (1996) and the acclaimed biography Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head (2010). His first novel Dusk Music was published in 2008. He lives in Todmorden, Lancashire.