Nicholas Dykes was born in Herefordshire, England, in 1942. He emigrated to Canada in 1963, where he studied history and worked in the museum field for many years before turning to freelance writing. Married, with two grown-up children, Nicholas returned to his native Herefordshire in 1982. Old Nick’s Guide to Happiness is his first novel.

Nicholas has been a writer all his working life, first as an historical writer in the museum field, then as a freelance speech and script writer in the business world.  He has also written articles, reviews, a book on politics, screenplays, and essays for philosophical journals both in the United Kingdom and the United States.
            Among his better-known works are two critical studies of the philosopher Karl Popper, “A Tangled Web of Guesses” (1996) and “Debunking Popper” (1998); and two essays exploring the ideas of the Russian-American novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, “Mrs Logic and the Law” (1998) and “The Facts of Reality:  Logic and History in Objectivist Debates about Government” (2005). 
            In 2004, Nicholas wrote an article for The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, “Ayn Rand in England,” as a contribution to the celebrations marking the Centenary of Ayn Rand’s birth in St Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905.  Unfortunately, his efforts  to acquire the UK automobile numberplate, AYN FE 05, did not succeed.