JAMES DALBY

James has had an interesting career. After spending 3 years in the Armed Forces, he had a spell selling Rolls Royce and Bentley motor cars in Mayfair. From there he was recruited to work in Eastern Nigeria. Just after he arrived, the area he was working in seceded from Federal Nigeria to become Biafra. James was accused of being a British spy, and he narrowly escaped with his family. Shortly afterward, the house they had lived in was bombed by the Federal Forces. Back in the UK, he joined a Scottish group as a General Manager. After a year he returned to West Africa, this time Ghana, where he became a senior director of a well-known British Corporation, that had been heavily involved in ‘Operation Postmaster’ during WW 2. While there, he became involved in helping the British military to demonstrate the British Hovercraft to the Ghanaian armed forces. He also became loosely involved in the selling of a naval destroyer to Ireland. Two years later, he moved to Jamaica, where he ran a British owned business that had poor management and financial problems. During his time there, with others, he won an International car rally in a Triumph PI. After successfully putting the business into profit, he returned to the UK and with the support of two others, took the position of Group Chief Executive of a large public corporation with varied interests, employing some 6,000 people. Later, he became an elected politician. After ten years, he and his wife Elizabeth, moved back to the Caribbean, sailing a large charter yacht. Elizabeth subsequently bought a busy restaurant and James went into computer technology, setting up a data corporation and a school to train students from the University of the West Indies. He also wrote a column for a large weekly West Indian newspaper under the name of ‘Blackdog’.

During this time, he invented a software that produced very high accuracies for digitised text. At the invitation of a US agency, they moved to the USA where they set up a specialised data company, to carry out work for the US government, which expanded to cater to typesetters, publishers, and printers.

After selling that corporation they moved to Southern Ireland and France where Elizabeth set up food processing companies. 10 years later they retired to live in Crete and now reside in Appledore, in North Devon. James has had many close contacts with both military and intelligence operatives during his international career, including employing an ex-Russian intelligence officer, having a partner who worked for the CIA and a US Naval Intelligence officer appointed to his board in the USA. His fictional novels cover spy and political thrillers. He is a licensed helicopter pilot, and helicopters often appear in his stories. He and Elizabeth have travelled widely in Europe, Africa, Middle East, Far East, the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Most of the hotels mentioned in his books, they have stayed in, most of the places mentioned, they have visited.