Gordon West was born in 1896. He studied at the London School of Economics and served in the Royal Navy in the First World War. After the war he began a career in Journalism, at one time working as Editor of Publications for the Liberal Party. He also toured the United States with two presidential candidates in 1928 - Alfred E. Smith and Herbert Hoover - in order to study the progress of American elections for Lloyd George.
In the 1920s he was Foreign Correspondent for the Westminster Gazette and during the years of the Second World War he was Foreign Editor of the Daily Sketch.
It was in the late 1920s that Gordon West and Mary, his wife, decided to explore the little-known island of Majorca, which was the inspiration for Jogging Round Majorca.