Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 in Beaconsfield to David and Eileen Pratchett, of Hay-on-Wye. He credits his education to High Wycombe Technical High School and Beaconsfield Public Library.  Working as a journalist, Pratchett interviewed Peter Bander van Duren, co-director of a small publishing company, and mentioned he had written a novel of his own, The Carpet People. Bander van Duren and his business partner, Colin Smythe, published the book in 1971.  In 1980, he became Press Officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board in an area which covered several nuclear power stations; he later joked that he had demonstrated impeccable timing by making this career change so soon after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, USA. Pratchett gave up his work for the CEGB in 1987 to make his living through writing. Since then he has managed to publish two novels a year. According to the 2005 Booksellers' Pocket Yearbook, in 2003 Pratchett's UK sales amounted to 3.4% of the fiction market by hardback sales and 3.8% by value, putting him in 2nd place behind J. K. Rowling (6% and 5.6% respectively), while in the paperback sales list Pratchett came 5th with 1.2% by sales and 1.3% by value (behind James Patterson (1.9% and 1.7%), Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham and J. R. R. Tolkien).  In 1998 Terry Pratchett was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature. Typically, his own tongue-in-cheek comment was "I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any." He has been awarded honorary Doctorates of Literature, by the University of Warwick in 1999, the University of Portsmouth in 2001, the University of Bath in 2003 and the University of Bristol in 2004.  His daughter Rhianna Pratchett (born 1976) is a journalist and "accidental cat collector"; she has also written a fantasy novella titled Child of Chaos, distributed with the computer role-playing game Beyond Divinity. She is working on the scripts and storyline for the PS3 game Heavenly Sword, the Xbox 360/PC game Overlord, and several others. She is a member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.  Pratchett lists his recreations as "writing, walking, computers, life". He is also well known for his penchant for wearing large, black hats, as seen on the inside back covers of most of his books.