My friend the historical novelist David Donachie, who has died aged 79, after suffering from cancer, used to say that he became a writer after trying most other careers first. He had been a house painter, salesman, truck driver, publican, ice-cream salesman, chauffeur and backstage hand in the theatre before turning his hand to authorship. It was no wonder that the dust jacket of his first novel told readers that he had had more jobs than birthdays.
That novel, The Devil’s Own Luck, set on a British warship during the Napoleonic wars, was published in 1991, and thereafter a stream of historical novels, distinguished by their pace and their author’s lively sense of history, followed.
Although most, such as the John Pearce adventures and the Nelson and Emma trilogy, were set in the late 18th-century navy, there were also crime novels, trilogies based in Republican Rome, the sixth-century Norman period in southern Italy, in Byzantium and during the Crusades, some under the pseudonyms Tom Connery and Jack Ludlow. David rarely produced fewer than two books a year and the final tally was 54: an American publisher recently contracted to publish them all in the US market.
David served two terms as chairman of the Society of Authors between 2016 and 2020, and campaigned for improved rewards for writers from publishers.
He was born in Edinburgh, the youngest of four children of Bethea (nee Bates), formerly a 1930s big band singer, and John Donachie, a painter and decorator, who had met his future wife when ballroom dancing. David was educated at Holy Cross academy through both primary and secondary schooling, but claimed to excel at only two subjects, history and truancy. He left just before his 15th birthday with no academic qualifications, to become apprenticed to his father.
He left for London before completing his apprenticeship and took a series of jobs where he could, the longest being a stagehand at various West End theatres including the Palladium, the Coliseum, and the Old Vic under Sir Laurence Olivier, whom he much admired for his friendliness to the backstage crew, as well as Chichester and the Yvonne Arnaud theatre in Guildford. It was while working at the Round House in Chalk Farm, north London, that he discovered an unused chest freezer that he commandeered lucratively to sell ice-creams at pop concerts.
David became a union rep during 10 years’ working at the Coliseum where, never one to stand back, he became a thorn in the management’s side, eventually contriving his own dismissal and moving with his partner, the actor and writer Sarah Grazebrook, and their two children, Thomas and Charlotte, to Deal on the Kent coast.
Sarah died in 2021. David is survived by Thomas and Charlotte and two grandchildren, Lewis and Alex.
