Richard Philips: Contours of an Ordinary Life Book Launch

Jane Sutcliffe would tell you she had an ordinary life. She would be wrong.

Born in Bradford in 1948, Jane grew up in a household where stability had to be invented from scratch. By nine she was running the house. By seventeen she had joined the Army. By her mid-twenties she had become the youngest commissioned officer in British Army history, a fact she mentioned once and never revisited.

What followed were decades that Jane would simply call getting on with it. A marriage made out of duty rather than love. A son born with a club foot, and a mother who looked the doctors in the eye and said no. Years in South Africa building a career so quietly that people found themselves trusting her before they had even thought to question why. And then, at fifty, something she had not seen coming. A love that was real, and earned, and entirely hers.

Contours of an Ordinary Life follows one woman from a Bradford terrace to the African bush, from the worst day of her life to the best years of it, from a childhood spent keeping everything together to a life that finally, in its later chapters, asked nothing of her except to live it.

Written with restraint, warmth, and an eye for the telling detail, Richard Phillips has crafted a portrait of a woman who rebuilt herself more times than she counted and never once asked to be noticed for it. This is not an inspirational story. It is something rarer. It is an honest one.

For readers of literary fiction inspired by a true life who believe that quiet lives, lived with integrity, deserve to be told.

About the Author

Richard Gerald Phillips became a full-time writer in 2020 following a distinguished 52-year career spanning law enforcement, corporate security, and high-risk financial operations. Born in Devon, England, he spent most of his life in South Africa, a country whose landscapes, people, and complexities continue to provide rich inspiration for his writing. 

Renowned for his energy, determination, and entrepreneurial spirit, Richard dedicated the final three decades of his corporate career to the cash management and security industry. In 2006, he co-founded an innovative automated retail cash management service and served as Joint Chief Executive Officer, helping transform the venture into a market-leading financial technology company before retiring in 2020. 

A lifelong adventurer, Richard spent decades exploring the remote and untamed regions of Southern Africa alongside his late soulmate and beloved wife, Ann of Africa. Their journeys took them from the Cunene River to Cape Agulhas, from the Fish River Canyon to the coast of Mozambique, creating a wealth of experiences and encounters that he documented through his popular website, Tales of the Bushman. 

Throughout his professional career, Richard established himself as a respected voice in security, and risk management, while retaining a lifelong passion for wildlife conservation, publishing extensively on topics ranging from corporate security challenges to remarkable encounters in the African wilderness. 

Since retirement, he has channelled his extensive real-world experience into fiction and satirical commentary. He is the author of the organised-crime thrillers Illegal Tender and The Architecture of Theft, as well as Tails from the Bushveld, a collection of humorous stories, travel adventures, and bushveld experiences drawn from a lifetime of exploration. His latest work, Contours of an Ordinary Life, is a true-life novel that explores a post-war life shaped by adversity, responsibility, and reinvention, and is scheduled for release in early July 2026. 

Richard’s books are available worldwide in digital, print, and audiobook formats through major retailers and platforms, including Amazon, Takealot, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and many others.