David William Paley was born in Sandhurst and, until retirement, held several financial control positions in international companies. He lived in Germany for four years where he was Manager of Reporting for a large American manufacturing group. On return to the UK, he became financial controller for a German manufacturer of electrical products. In addition to his native English, he speaks both German and French and lives with his French wife in southern England.
Upon retirement, he enhanced his computer skills by acquiring several computer languages and creating several web sites including English Usage and poetry. He is creator of poemswithoutfrontiers which presents poems in their original text of English, French and German and his translations of each into the other two languages in order to bring poetry to a wider audience. The site consists of several hundred poems by European and US poets, including a selection of his own works.
He has published five Romantic novels, ‘The Magic Canopy’, ‘Four Ways to Keep a Secret’, 'Oceans of Regret', 'Raking the Sands' and 'Sorrows Mended' as well as a poetry book of ninety poems, ‘Visions and Illusions’. They all appear in both print and Kindle versions. In addition, he has created two Kindle collections of French and German poems, ‘101 French Poems’ and ‘150 German Poems’, that contain poems in their original texts each followed by his translations into English.