David Downie was born in Singapore in 1948, where his father, also David, was recovering after being injured during a (Communist) terrorist ambush three months earlier on the rubber estate he managed in northern Malaya, near Kuala Lumpur.

David’s first — and possibly only — book is about his father’s journey as a volunteer in the Federated States of Malaya up to his internment after the capitulation of Singapore, and his three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Thailand and in camps along the Thai-Burma Railway. During his internment David’s father kept a secret diary, which forms the core of the book, and concludes with his life post-war.

After months recuperating in his home city of Edinburgh, David’s father retrained to become a tropical specialist with the Colonial Agricultural Service. Subsequently, the family spent periods in East and West Africa and Central America.

David and his sister Anthea were sent to England to be educated, like many colonial children at that time. David attended Grenville College in Bideford, North Devon, then Edinburgh University to study Ecological Science, where he met his wife Sheila, then a medical student. A postgraduate degree in Town and Regional Planning led to work in Strathclyde Regional Council and then with the Countryside Commission for Scotland (later Scottish Natural Heritage) in Perth.

Following retirement David has kept busy, briefly running a campervan hire business, volunteering with the local ‘Bloom’ group, and founding and chairing a local charity to establish a community hub. Describing himself as a ‘grasshopper hobbyist’ he’s dabbled with beekeeping, woodturning, watercolour painting and cooking. He and Sheila have three children and five grandchildren and still live close to Perth.