Dave’s background is in journalism and he spent 20 years as a newspaper editor before leaving the industry to start his own PR and media consultancy. He took early retirement so he could focus instead on his love of creative writing and is currently studying for a master’s degree in crime and thriller writing at Cambridge University.

He particularly enjoys reading and writing about comic crime fiction – the genre he has chosen for his debut novel – although he has also been shortlisted in various short story and flash fiction competitions, and in 2020 won the National Association of Writers’ Groups’ Short Story competition. He is also working on a true crime book about his great grandfather who escaped the hangman’s noose in a notorious Victorian murder trial.

Apart from writing, his other great love is history and he can often be found tramping across battlefields or poking around medieval castles, much to his long-suffering wife’s bemusement. As well as being a member of the Battlefields Trust he is the treasurer of the Leicestershire branch of the Richard III Society and was a member of the project team that organised the events surrounding the reinterment of King Richard’s mortal remains in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.

He lives with his wife in leafy Leicestershire – just a bowshot away from the Bosworth battlefield where Richard III met his untimely demise.