Geoff Taylor was brought to Australia when he was three years old [one source says two years old] and was educated in Adelaide before becoming a copy boy and later journalist with the Adelaide News. He joined the RAAF in 1940, training at Point Cook, Victoria, before his posting to England. He flew on operations as a Lancaster pilot with an RAF squadron of Bomber Command. His Lancaster bomber was shot down over Germany in 1943 and he was imprisoned at Stalag IVb, Muhlberg-on-Elbe. His experiences during the Second World War have formed the basis of much of his writing, including The Nuremberg Massacre (1975), an account of the heavy losses incurred by crews of the RAF Bomber Command on 30 March 1944.
After the war Taylor worked in Melbourne as a law court reporter for the Southern Cross newspaper; then he worked for a public relations firm before being employed as a journalist with the Commonwealth Department of Information. Following that position he was a reporter for the Argus, progressing to deputy night chief-of-staff. His acceptance of an offer to work for an advertising agency was the beginning of a career in the advertising industry. In the biography supplied for Beware the Wounded Tiger, he described himself as leading 'a fairly schizophrenic life - English-born but Australian-bred, a journalist turned advertising copywriter, and advertising copywriter who also writes books, an ex-Air Force pilot who turned to yachting and is now flying again as a private pilot...'.
