David was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 1947. After spending four years at art school, he has been a graphic designer for pretty much his entire working life, with posts in a number of London advertising agencies before having his own agency in Cullompton, Devon. For the last twenty five years of his career, he was Design Director for a major international non fiction publishing house.
He supported himself through art school in the 1960s by living above and working in a popular coffee bar, a unique and quite unforgettable experience. He rowed in a gig crew while at school and has since done a fair amount of small boat sailing and canoeing. After a brief though exciting time potholing, David started serious rock climbing during his last year at college. He has since climbed all over the UK, in the Alps and in Norway with a number of first ascents to his name. He doesn’t climb much these days, but still like to get on the rock whenever possible. After a serious fall twenty years ago, it looked as if he might never climb again. As a substitute for the adrenaline rush, he took up flying and gained his Private Pilot’s Licence, reckoning the process to have been a challenging but extremely rewarding experience. He has subsequently returned to sailing and recently completed a Day Skipper course prior to an exciting week’s cruising in Croatia.
His abiding passion for many years has been, and remains, writing. He has written poetry ever since discovering Bob Dylan and the beat poets while at college, spending time with a variety of poetry groups from Nottingham to Blandford in Dorset and publishing a small collection, LifeLines, in 1995 under the Haselbury Press imprint.
He has been writing short stories for many years and has amassed quite a collection. None have ever been submitted for publication.
David reads pretty much everything and anything although he prefers to get his news from the internet rather than newspapers or magazines. Most of his recreational reading is fiction, favourite authors including Andrew Greig, Nevil Shute, Bernard Cornwell, Sam Llewellyn, Robert Harris, Nick Hornby, Derek Robinson, Clare Francis, Len Deighton and Ian McEwan.
His first complete novel, A Well Kept Secret, is the product of many years of stopping and starting and more re-writes than he cares to remember. In fact, he was able to cull enough material from an earlier version to form the basis of a sequel which he hopes to complete early in 2017. The Hawkswell saga may not be finished yet!
‘Windfall’, on the other hand, has taken less time and fewer re-writes, primarily because the story has remained largely unchanged throughout its gestation.
His current novel, Falling centres on a long time passion for rock climbing and is based in 1970 at the coffee bar in Ealing where he used to work.
