Robert Nurden took a degree in English at Oxford Brookes University, later qualifying as a teacher. But he soon became a journalist, working on several local newspapers before landing in what used to be known as Fleet Street in the 1980s. Since then he has spent his professional life spinning his own words as a feature writer on the Independent, Guardian and Daily Telegraph or editing other people's.

Like many journalists, he spent many years hankering after the big project. In 2018 he found it by writing "Between Heaven and Earth", the biography of his controversial grandfather, Stanley James. His meticulous research took him to Canada, Ireland and to numerous libraries and archives around England and Wales.