Born in Taunton, Somerset, Giles was the son of an engine driver for the Great Western Railway. His first trips to Cornwall were in the leading carriage of the train which his father drove from Taunton to Penzance, and John Branfield (2005) describes in his personal memoir of his St Agnes friend, how excited Tony always was in being in Cornwall. Art was his favourite subject at school (Huish's) and when he left school he took up an apprenticeship as a cartographic draughtsman at the Admiralty Hydrographic Office near Taunton.

Dust jacket information: 'Giles's paintings were inspired by the way man has shaped the Cornish landscape. He painted railway tracks and viaducts, clay workings and mine buildings, harbours and chapels in a very lively, highly individual style.' Frank RUHRMUND (journalist/art reviewer, Cornishman & other newspapers) concluded that Tony Giles was 'one of Cornwall's most powerful and prolific, and strange as it may seem, still most under-rated artists.'