Author

Born in Manchester, Jeremy Mitchell was educated at Ampleforth and Brasenose College, Oxford. His two years of National Service were spent in the Northumberland Fusiliers and the Royal Artillery. In the 1950s, he was research director at Which? in its early days and was later chief executive of the Social Science Research Council, director of consumer affairs at the Office of Fair Trading and director of the National Consumer Council. He is the author and editor of a number of books, mostly concerned with promoting the interests of consumers in relation to banking, financial services and communications. In Shrapnel and Whizzbangs, he has used the trench diary and notes kept by his father – George Oswald Mitchell (G.O.M.) – throughout four years of fighting in the First World War as the basis for a vivid account of what life in the trenches was like for an ordinary soldier.