L J Rushton

The Western genre has been a lifelong passion of mine. Somewhat strange for a 34 year old English lad, as the Western genre had well begun to fade when I was young. From the first time I watched classic films like The Magnificent Seven, the Dollars Trilogy and literally Anything John Wayne related, to the hours spent reading Dime novels and Larry McMurtry, and Charles Portis' True Grit, the American frontier has always felt like a second home. At the age of four, I was so enamoured with Yul Brynner’s Chris that I attended a fancy-dress party dressed as him, black hat, toy revolver, and, yes, a white swimming cap standing in for his signature bald head. That early devotion has never faded. My fascination with the West is matched only by my deep interest in American history, the 1830s onward, the westward expansion, the Indian Wars, and the closing of the frontier.