Born in Melton Mowbray, I now live in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in north-west Leicestershire. I was a Primary School teacher for thirty years, including headships at Cauldon Lowe in Staffordshire and Sudbury in Derbyshire. I escaped from teaching when I was fifty, tunnelling out from beneath a mountain of paper, in order to write full-time.
My first stories were science fiction tales for children. These were broadcast on Radio Leicester, then published as a children's book. I then started writing gory crime and horror stories under the pen-name Jack Wainer. (I changed my name because my ten-year-olds at school thought that any book with David Bell on the cover was for them). Since then I have written thirty-plus off-beat local history books, all bat two published by Countryside Books and by Bradwell Books.
A recent book that I'm proud of is called "The Dirty Thirty" (published by Five Leaves) and is the story of thirty heroic Leicestershire miners who supported the 1984/5 miners' strike, in a sea of local hostility. Fives Leaves also published my latest book "Reds, Rebesl and Radicals."
I enjoy listening to New Orleans jazz and drinking cider and red wine. Having been a conventional jacket-and-tie, short-back-and-sides teacher for so long, I am now the only pony-tailed eighty year old in town. I am a member of the Crime Writers Asssociation, and the former convenor for its Midlands chapter. (Like the Hells Angels, the CWA refers to its regional groups as chapters). I am the programme secretary of Ashby Writers' Club, founded in 1984, which originally grew out of some short story writing classes I was running in two local colleges.
I also give talks based on my books to WIs, luncheon clubs, TWGs, Co-op groups, unions etc, in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Staffs and Notts.