Tom was born in New York and took a degree in English at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, which included a year at the University of Leicester. He returned to Leicester to complete a masters degree in Modern English and American Literature and then began work as an English and General Studies Teacher at a large college of further education. Having taught students from all twelve departments at the college, he became more interested in the education process as such than in teaching people how to write letters, and he completeted a second masters in Adult Educational Studies at the University of Surrey. When the opportunity arose, he began tutoring on teacher training courses, ranging from basic City & Guilds programmes to Certificates of Education. He also tutored on education programmes for the Open University. On retiring from full-time work at a college, he joined the PCET team at Southampton where he currently teaches on the Cert Ed and the PGCE (PCET) programmes. Until recently he was also an External Verifier for education programmes for City & Guilds.