Otto Spaeth was the owner of a Dayton machine tool factory and both he and his wife were passionate art collectors.

The family's private art collection included such artists as Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Edward Hopper.

[2] After National Service as a British Army officer with the Royal West African Frontier Force, Bailey went to Merton College, Oxford, in 1952, where he read history.

When a friend suggested to Bailey that he submit his writings to The New Yorker, he sent in a piece about parking meters and an account of a day spent with Austrian Catholic priest Ivan Illich, who worked for the poor in Harlem.

[5] Under Shawn, Bailey was a "Talk of the Town" reporter and also worked briefly as a reader in the fiction department before becoming a staff writer.

His third novel Major André (about Benedict Arnold's attempt to hand over West Point to the British) received positive reviews in 1987.

[16] Bailey met Margot Speight (from Yorkshire, England), his future wife, in the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, New York.

In The Coast of Summer: Sailing New England Waters from Shelter Island to Cape Cod, Bailey describes the couple's nautical adventures in Lochinvar, their 27-foot sloop.