[2] His father, Maurice, a civll engineer, was based in Bengal at the time.
From 1940 to 1955 he served as foreign editor on the British newspaper The Daily Express.
In 1954 he interviewed Hitler's former commando chief, Otto Skorzeny – then living in Madrid.
In 1955 Foley moved to Cyprus and took over The Cyprus Times newspaper at a moment in the island's history when a civil war was breaking out between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and the Greek Cypriot EOKA movement was starting an armed struggle against the British colonial government in Cyprus.
Between 1960 and 1977 he was a correspondent for the London Observer, and was based in Los Angeles, California.