Tarka King was born in Dublin in 1949 and reared in Co. Galway, five miles from the city, attending the local national school until the age of 13. His mother was a writer and daughter of Shane Leslie, an early Irish nationalist. His father was a submarine commander throughout World War II and later took the Irish tricolour round Cape Horn alone.

After a brief spell in an English school he travelled to Australia to work. A short but extremely violent incarceration in Alice Springs jail triggered a desire to return home overland. In Malaya contact was made with Chen Ping's communist fighters on a hijacked train and in northern Cambodia in 1969 direct confrontation with more brutal aspects of the Vietnam War was witnessed first hand.

On reaching the UK in 1970 he was recruited into the British Army and sent to the Lebanon to report on the emerging Russian puppet Syrian regime of Saddam Assad. A family connection with Trotsky and Lenin helped with Russians encounters and a relationship with a Palestinian dancer provided insights on the Druze and coming war. In Cyprus he had a friendship with Nicos Sampson and Dimi Dimitriou who, with their coup attempt to depose Archbishop Makarios, triggered the Turkish invasion of 1974.

Eye-witnessing the Balcombe Street siege he realised the enormity of British misunderstanding about the root causes behind Ireland's social problems and having declared his case, resigned and returned to his mother's home in Co, Monaghan to farm in 1976.