My name is Robert Charles Alexander. I should explain the middle name. It turns out that, quite astonishingly, there are other Robert Alexanders in the world who have had the audacity to become authors. Quite what they were thinking, I've never discovered! So, to avoid confusion, I write under all three names.

If someone had told the younger me that my life would take me around the world many time, living in on three continents, through the worlds of music, technology, law, publishing and journalism, I might have wondered whether they had mistaken me for somebody else.

Yet looking back…. perhaps the clues were there all along.

I've always been fascinated by people. Not simply what they do, but the experiences that shape them. The decisions that change everything. The unexpected encounters. The moments of triumph, disaster, laughter and sheer disbelief that become the stories we tell around the dinner table.

My own journey has been anything but conventional.

From England to Australia and America, I've worked with people from remarkably different backgrounds. Along the way, I developed a fascination with the extraordinary lives of people whose achievements might otherwise be forgotten.

That curiosity eventually led me to write an award-winning book about Alan Dower Blumlein, the remarkable British inventor whose pioneering work helped transform sound recording and broadcasting. The book attracted the attention of BBC Radio 4 and Universal Films, which took an option on the story.

It reinforced something I've come to believe passionately: almost everyone has an extraordinary story, although remarkably few realise it.

As a journalist with the BBC and Newsweek, I've investigated government decisions, examined complex legal disputes and reported on events affecting thousands of lives. But some of the most memorable stories I've encountered have had nothing to do with headlines.

They've been about ordinary people making extraordinary choices. About families, friendships, ambitions, sacrifices and those peculiar twists of fate nobody could possibly have planned.

One of the privileges of growing older is appreciating that our lives aren't defined solely by our achievements. They're defined by the people we've loved, the mistakes we've made, the challenges we've overcome and the memories we've collected.

And occasionally, of course, by the things that went spectacularly wrong.

That's what draws me to StoryTerrace: the opportunity to listen, ask the questions nobody has thought to ask, and preserve a lifetime of memories for generations yet to come.

After all, everybody has a story.

Sometimes they just need someone to help them tell it.