David Beaty (author)

Beaty was born in Hatton, Ceylon on 28 March 1919, the son of a Methodist minister, and was educated at the Kingswood School followed by Merton College, Oxford where he read History and edited Cherwell, a student newspaper.

Thanks largely to the support of his university tutors, he eventually passed selection and completed flying training, receiving a pilot grading of 'exceptional'.

Already an accomplished novelist, Beaty turned his attention to identifying the possible causes behind aviation accidents attributed to pilot error, enrolling at University College London to read psychology.

This was followed by The Water Jump: The Story of Transatlantic Flight (1976), The Complete Skytraveller (1979) and Strange Encounters: Mysteries of the Air (1982), before he returned to the subject of his first non-fiction book in The Naked Pilot - The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents (1991).

His first book was met with considerable resistance, not least from a number of aviators, because it portrayed pilots as ordinary human beings, susceptible to errors and mistakes.

On 10 June 1972, a 90-minute adaptation of Beaty's novel The Temple Tree, scripted by Betty Davies and Michael Spice, was transmitted in BBC Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre slot.