A major in the Royal Artillery, he retired from the British Army to civilian life as a quantity surveyor for the War Office and moved to Abergavenny with his wife Rosina and daughter, Georgina.

In 1963 he published The Race of the Tiger, a novel the O'Haras, an Irish clan who in the mid-19th century emigrate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, to work in the booming iron and steel industry.

An appendix to the book presents evidence suggesting that Richard Lewis, known as Dic Penderyn, may have been unjustly condemned to be hanged, for which he has become known as the first Welsh working-class martyr.

The trilogy continued with Cordell's 1977 work, This Sweet and Bitter Earth, describing the slate quarries of North Wales in 1900, and later the Rhondda Valley coal mining industry, as seen through the eyes of Toby Davis.

This second trilogy concluded in 1983 with Land of My Fathers which deals with both copper mining on the island of Anglesey and the iron foundries of Dowlais between 1838 and 1861 through the eyes of the character of Taliesin Roberts.