Michael Lieber is an English novelist, playwright and poet, best known for his debut novel The War Hero, other prose by Lieber include The Boy And The Goldlock and Helga Dune. He is noted for his use of allegory and symbolism. 1988 - 2002 Michael Lieber was born Michael John Griffiths on the 6th of May 1988 in Birmingham, England; Soon after, his parents divorced, resulting in him, his Mother and three siblings relocating to the South of Wales, where they settled in a prosperous port town called Tenby. Lieber's creative nature manifested at this time in the form of magic, and could be found busking around the port from the age of ten; together with his messy hair, he wore a traditional blue suit that was remarked to be two sizes too big for him. Despite his many talents, Lieber as a child remained completely illiterate even as he approached his 11th birthday, it was by order of his Father in 1998 that he was moved back to England on his own, to attend schooling at the Maple Hayes Dyslexia Institute in Lichfield (now known as the Maple Hayes School for Dyslexics), the Institute resided within an old stately manor on top of a hill, behind gated security and was run by its founders Dr. Neville Brown and Dr. Daryl Brown who were pioneering a new and controversial teaching technique called 'The Morpheme Method'; the method required the subject to memories hundreds of symbols, each one representing a different segment of every single word in the English language. Lieber was one of ten children involved in the study. Although resistant and homesick at first, it was a chance conversation with the two doctors that sparked a change within him, stating that if he didn't learn to write, all the stories he had in his head would die with him and be lost forever; after this, he committed to the method entirely, the result of which was a remarkable outcome, his illiteracy shrank away with every symbol he memorised, mastering Shakespeare's iambic pentameter in a matter of hours; soon he was reading through countless books in the institute's private library, and eventually began to write his own simple works. Although most of his writings from this period were either lost or destroyed, one narrative poem survives; 'Elle's Logic', which he later adapted into one of his novellas (The Boy And The Goldlock). During his five years at the Institute, he was deemed in one scientific study, to be 'a child prodigy of the Morpheme Method', and to this day, Lieber remains one of the best case studies for its validity. 2003 - 2022 Upon leaving the institute at fifteen, Lieber found himself at a loss, until a stage manager and friend of the family, suggested he be placed in a production of Oliver Twist that was being staged at the Garrick Theatre in the summer months of 2003. Lieber agreed, and filled in for one of the workhouse boys; before long, he became enchanted by the theatre and adored the flamboyant company of actors; this led to a brief enrolment at The Oxford School Of Speech And Drama, but he soon dropped out after six months, declaring "Drama schools seek to destroy any and all natural talent", before moving to London in 2008 to make his name as a playwright and actor. He would spend a total of seven years in London studying the plays of Oscar Wilde and began work on a three-act farce entitled 'Conning the Vales'. In 2011, he witnessed the burning down of the Tandem Centre during the London Riots and help defend The Royal Standard pub in Colliers Wood from looters and petrol bombs; he also starred in a number of films throughout this period, including the award winning period drama Ramanujan in 2014, and the psychological thriller A Room To Die For produced by Sony Pictures in 2017. During a production of Salome at the Courtyard Theatre, he fell in love with a young actress named Atlanta Johnson; for reasons unknown, the two separated, although it is speculated that his dwindling funds made London living unaffordable; the concept of wealth and social class would be a regular theme in his work to come. Heartbroken, he returned to the only place that felt remotely like home, the city of Lichfield, he began drinking heavily, grew a large beard and desperate to forget not only Atlanta but the London theatre, he rewrote his unperformed stage play into prose and renamed it The War Hero; this low point in his life transformed what was once a light-hearted farce into undoubtedly the darkest and most philosophical novel he ever wrote. Upon writing his second and third works of prose, The Boy And The Goldlock and Helga Dune, he began to see the romantic themes of his work and how they lined up perfectly with the stylings of nineteenth-century literature, and proposed to join the likes of Donna Tartt in defining the importance of neo-romanticism in the 21st century.