Clifford Thompson is a journalist, writer and former London Firefighter. He has worked in television news for more than 20 years and is a staff journalist with BBC News covering national and international stories. He has a Diploma of Higher Education in psychology from the University of East London, a Bachelor's degree in Humanities from the University of London (Birkbeck) and in 2012, he graduated from City University's MA in Narrative Non-fiction Writing. In 2014 he was awarded a scholarship by the Norman Mailer Center in the US, at the University of Utah to study creative non-fiction and develop his writing. The venue was Salt Lake City - the setting for Mailer's The Executioner's Song. Falling Through Fire is his first book - a memoir about his time, first as a firefighter, then as a journalist working on major disasters including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Paddington train crash.