He wrote principally on non-fiction topics (biography, technology, computing, jazz, illustration, and folklore), as well as three novels, a number of poems, and pantomimes.

In 1939, with the approach of war, the family left London for Cambridge, where Dale was to develop lifelong interests in writing, engineering, printing, publishing, and music.

In 1953 Dale began a two-year term of National Service, first joining the Suffolk Regiment and later transferring to the Royal Army Education Corps, where he served as a sergeant instructor both in Shorncliffe, Kent, and Münster, Westphalia (BAOR12), Germany.

In 1963 he joined Cambridge Consultants full-time, heading several design projects before ultimately assuming the role of the organisation's personnel and training manager.

In parallel with his work at Cambridge Consultants, Dale developed his career as an author, writing a series of articles on new technology for The Engineer as well as the first biography of artist–illustrator Louis Wain.

This resulted in publication of The Tumour in the Whale: A Collection of Modern Myths (1978), the first popular compilation of and commentary on contemporary or urban legends and which American folklorist Jan Brunvand has described as "a landmark work.

Brunvand holds that "international students of urban legends have accepted FOAF with enthusiasm as a shorthand reference to the claimed source of stories.