The following text is from the "About the Author" page for A History of the Mountain Province, a book written by Howard T. Fry:
Dr. Howard T. Fry was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where he won an organ scholarship in 1938. His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, in which he served first in the army, and then as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Completing his studies in Cambridge after the war, he spent several years as a school-master, and, for a while, returned to the Royal Air Force as a flying instructor.
In 1963 he returned to Cambridge University to study for Ph.D., and his thesis (which was later published) on the notable eighteenth-century merchant and hydrographer of the English East India Company, Alexander Dalrymple, first awakened his interest in the Philippines; for Dalrymple tried hard to establish an English trading base in the Sulu archipelago, and his negotiations for a territorial cession (or lease) of North of Borneo to the East India Company has proved of political significance in our own time.
In 1968 Dr. Fry joined the history department of James Cook University of Queensland, Australia, where he was asked to organize a program of Southeast Asian historical studies. He there upon made the study of Philippine history one of his own fields of specialization, and James Cook University became the only university in Australia to make the study of Philippine history a top priority in its Southeast Asian program.
Dr. Fry, is married to a Filipina.
