Rex W Last has written several books on modern German literature, including Erich Kästner, Erich Maria Remarque, Hans Arp, and Dadaist literature, and has translated non-fiction works including Willy Brandt's wartime memoirs, a study of Max Ernst, a biography of Bertha von Suttner, the famous anti-war campaigner and authoress of Lay Down Your Arms, and an account of the life and time in office of West German President Gustav Heinemann. He was co-editor and programmer of the massive two-volume Arthurian Bibliography, and he has edited many more books, series of books, and academic journals.

He has also written books on computing topics, including MS-DOS and artificial intelligence. He was editor of Amstrad PCW Magazine for many years (later rebranded as PCW User) and has written hundreds of articles for this and other computing magazines. As a pioneer of CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), he has designed a number of programming packages for the education market. In the 1960s, he became editorial director of Oswald Wolff Publishers Ltd, and was MD of two independent local history and academic publishing companies, the Hutton Press and Lochee Publications.

Now retired as a Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the University of Dundee, but still writing and programming, he has embraced the new technology of publishing by turning to eBooks for the Kindle. Original titles are being produced, as well as guides from the Making Sense of series, which first appeared under the Hutton Press imprint, which are currently being rewritten and republished for the Kindle.

His first novel, Cursing the Darkness, is a thriller set in the Nuremberg of the 1930s which explores the exploits of a group of friends determined to strike back against an all-powerful Nazi state. Actually, it's his fifth novel, but the other four are deservedly languishing in box files in the attic.