Chris Durbin is a published author of historical fiction, drawing on his own experiences and extensive education. Durbin grew up in Porthcawl, a seaside town in South Wales, where he developed a love for sailing as a sea cadet in the Bristol Channel. He spent two years teaching tactics at a US Navy training center in San Diego and served in the Royal Navy for twenty-four years, during which time he participated in operational campaigns in the Falkland Islands, the Middle East, and the Adriatic. After retiring from the navy, Durbin worked in the aerospace, defense, and security industry for eighteen years, including two years on the design team for the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
Durbin is a graduate of several prestigious institutions, including the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, the British Army Command and Staff College, the United States Navy War College, and Cambridge University. He holds a postgraduate diploma in national security decision-making and an MPhil in International Relations. With a lifelong interest in naval history and a long-standing ambition to write historical fiction, Durbin began creating the Carlisle & Holbrooke series, which follows a colonial Virginian who commands a British navy frigate during the middle years of the eighteenth century. The series will explore the Seven Years War and the turbulent relations between Britain and her American Colonies in the 1760s, as well as the loyalty issues that arise as British policy and colonial restlessness lead to the American Revolution.
Durbin currently resides on the south coast of England, surrounded by hundreds of years of naval history. He and his wife, who retired from the US Navy after thirty-nine years of service, enjoy sailing their classic dayboat in their free time. Durbin's three children are all busy growing their own families and careers. In a nod to the great writer Patrick O'Brian, Durbin has a tortoise named Aubrey in his garden, though it has not yet grown to the gigantic proportions of Testudo Aubreii.