Born into a working-class family with a father who proudly boasted that he had never read a book, Tony Bayliss grew up in Wantage and, after three years in a secondary modern school, was sent to a small boys' boarding school near Newbury. He excelled at sport, and won prizes for singing and academic achievement, then went on to train as a teacher at Loughborough, entering what his father dismissed as a ‘tin-pot’ profession. 

 

He taught in various parts of England, ran a teachers' centre in central London, and ended up as a school inspector in the Midlands. He then had a career change, leaving education, and developed a property business, which he sold ten years later so that he could concentrate on his life-long dream, to be a writer. 

 

He edited a number of different magazines while at university and in his various education jobs, and founded singing and operatic societies in the 1970's, some of which are still running. He also directed a festival of arts for seven years. He published poetry in his teens and early twenties, but his creative writing output dropped while bringing up his large family, and being busy with his full-time career. He published articles and books on education, one of which resulted in him presenting to  World Congress, and broadcasting on radio and television.

 

He reads a lots of science-oriented non-fiction, and uses the information gathered to fuel novels which are dystopian, or which hover on the borderline between the possible and the probable. For example, Past Continuous, which was inspired by the suicide of his eldest son, foresaw the use of miniaturised flying cameras disguised as insects, while A Parting of the Ways and Reunion suggest that there are parallel universes with alternative destinations. He also tackles religious fundamentalism and its impact on women, in Future Perfect, and comically in The Ten Virgins, and other Bible Stories for Atheists. His series of children’s stories comprising 750 pages spread over five volumes were written during an eighteen month period when he was unable to see his infant son, and relied on video contact, during which he read a new story every week. His on-going life-long work is a series of diaries, started when he was ten, with twenty-five year gaps between each instalment. He continues to plan new work.