Bill Newton Dunn was a British MEP (member of the European Parliament) who was first elected in 1979 to represent Lincolnshire. He lost his final election in the East Midlands division in 2014. At the time he was the only candidate across the whole of Europe who had been elected to the first parliament. He started as a British Conservative but crossed the floor to the Liberal Democrats in 2000 because the former were becoming shaky and unreliable about European unity. Previously, he wrote an 'instant history' book about the first European Parliament, also two biographies (one called 'Big Wing' about Trafford Leigh-Mallory and the other called 'The Man Who Was John Bull', about Theodore Hook (1788-1841) who, Bill believes, was the funniest improvisor ever of poems and songs in the English language. Bill says that, if he could choose only one person from all history with whom to spend an evening, it would be Theodore Hook - because so many of Hook's contemporaries recorded their glee in diaries and letters. Bill is now writing a serious novel about international organised crime and the inability of Europe's unjoined-up police forces to fight it successfully. Bill is married with two successful grown-up children and two delightful grandsons.