DANIEL KINGTON

BIOGRAPHY

   Born in 1966 at Berkeley, England, Danny Kington was raised and educated in Australia and Britain.  He served as an infantryman in both the regular and Territorial Army and completed a tour of Belize in 1988.  He was a civil servant when he resigned his post in September 1991, travelled to the breakaway Republic of Croatia and enlisted in the fledgling Croatian Army as a foreign volunteer soldier.  He fought in the Vinkovci salient on the eastern Slavonia front and participated in the battle for Vukovar.  Injured twice, he was medically retired in September 1992 and received the Homeland War medal.

   He returned to government service; for five years he was a fraud investigator and is now a manager with responsibilities across Surrey and Sussex.

   Entirely self-taught, as a semi-professional freelance illustrator his work has graced books, magazines, government reports and one off commissions; he is a part-time actor and recently appeared in Ken Loach’s film The Wind That Shakes The Barley; he writes poetry some of which appeared in Poppy Fields (Ed. S Twelvetree) and At The Heart Of War.  He is also a volunteer welfare caseworker for the Royal British Legion and a keen genealogist who can trace his antecedents back three hundred years.  He writes humour, tries to make people laugh and worries about his weight. 

   In 1995 he founded the Croatian Forces International Volunteers Association (CFIVA), the official veterans association of foreign citizens of the wars of Croatian and Bosnian independence.  In 2001 he graduated with a Batchelor of Arts Honours degree in Modern Drama Studies at Brunel University, London.  Following his first public exhibition abroad, Danny was elected to the Croatian Society of Caricaturists (HDK) in 2005.

   He is married to his Croatian wife Mirela and lives in Sussex.

“We have but one life.  It is not a rehearsal and there is no second chance.  We owe it to those who have gone before and to those who have yet to live to make the best of our time, to leave the world a better place than we found it.”