 His grandfather, Colonel Kenneth Cantlie, designed the China Railways KF locomotive, at 260 tons the largest locomotive of post-war China that remained in service until 1972.Cantlie's father Paul died on 16 October 2014, having released a video pleading for his son's release on his deathbed.Cantlie started his journalistic career in the early 1990s as a tester for Sega video-games.