User:Cfletch96/sandbox

• Comment: I am not yet persuaded that they pass WP:NAUTHOR, but you have not helped me to decide because you have hidden any notability in an ill-formatted draft. Please read WP:MOS, and apply what you learn. 🇵🇸‍🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦‍🇵🇸 16:50, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

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Dr Christopher John Heal, born 12 June 1947, is an eclectic author who mixes historical and autobiographical themes ranging from sweeping international canvasses to detailed local stories, all based on extensive original research.

Education and early life

Heal attended St Benedict's School, attached to Ealing Abbey, west London, where he complained of sexual molestation by the monks during frequent corporal punishment. He was expelled when he topped his year in English and mathematics and came bottom in every other subject. He moved to grammar schools in Southall, Middlesex, and in West Bromwich. As house captain and prefect at the latter, he was expelled again for persistent truancy (he spent long weekends either rock climbing in North Wales or travelling the Midlands with an adopted Romany family) and for making loans to young school staff funded from his extensive local window cleaning business.

His principal climbs were in Llanberis Pass where he occasionally mingled with the greats of the 1960s, including Pete Crew with whom he developed a new route, Yellow Wall. He witnessed a number of serious and fatal incidents. He eventually gave up the sport after a painful fall on a new climb on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel which resulted in the first of a series of back injuries and a life-long fear of heights.

Biafran war

In 1967, Heal joined the RAF at South Cerney, Gloucestershire, as a trainee pilot, the only grammar school boy on his course. The engagement lasted only a few weeks and he was asked to leave for "incompatibility with service customs". Heal then attended the College of Air Training in Hamble, Hampshire, set up to produce new airline pilots for British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways. He grew close to fellow student Okigbo Biggar, a young relative through marriage of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the leader of the province of Biafra which seceded from Nigeria in that year. When Biggar was threatened with arrest for promoting Biafran independence in public talks, Heal aided his escape by flying him from Hamble to Gatwick airport to join an international flight. Heal was asked to quit the college.
Later that year, Heal agreed to fly an ex-Luftwaffe DC-3 Dakota from Lisbon to Biafra. He made a number of further trips from Europe supplying the rebels with ammunition and food, including one as a passenger on a Lockheed Super Constellation freighter which was sabotaged and crashed in Morocco. He was awarded the Biafran Bravery Medal for his part in shooting down a Russian Mig-17 jet fighter near the Biafran's last airbase on a converted main road at Uli. He also took part over several weeks in the mass burial of many hundreds of the, perhaps, one million Biafran women and children starved to death by the British food blockade.

Business career

Heal joined IBM as a writer at their manufacturing plant in Greenock, Scotland. He progressed through the ranks with positions in Communications and Marketing, working in London, Portsmouth, Basingstoke, Edinburgh and Paris. While travelling to a position in Johannesburg, he was caught in a New Year's Eve bomb explosion, planted by the Palestine Liberation Organisation in a Nairobi hotel, further injuring his back; at least twenty people died. In 1992, Heal led a multi-million pound BIMBO (Buy-In, Management Buy-Out) of the company's UK marketing communications department. He sold his share in the company seven years later and worked independently as an adviser and shareholder in a number of start-ups, mainly in new technologies.

Interests

During his time in Scotland, Heal became an expert SCUBA diver and an instructor of the Scottish Sub-Aqua Club and founder member of its Largs branch.

He travelled extensively from an early age, often hitch-hiking. In his teens, he journeyed several times around Europe. Later trips included from the UK to Kashmir, taking in Iran and Afghanistan; crossing the Sahara; sailing the River Niger from Timbuctoo to Lagos; Sri Lanka; south-east Asia and around the Mediterranean to indulge his great interest in archaeology, particularly Roman mosaics.

From the 1980s, Heal spent five years as chairman of the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke, when its owner, the local council, asked him to restructure its governance and finances to save it from closure. In the 1990s, he designed and made bespoke furniture as a hobby, usually in oak in early English styles.

In 2010, while in his sixties, Heal began a masters degree in history at the University of the West of England in Bristol. After disagreement over teaching style, he left to take a doctorate at the University of Bristol researching almost 400 years of the previously undocumented local felt hat industry. He gave over fifty lectures to university and local history groups and was responsible for the introduction of popular Hatters' Trails, supported by South Gloucestershire Council. Heal's work received many awards.

Heal conducted research for the Maritime Archaeology Trust in Southampton. He then took up serious writing with a series of books ranging from popularising his doctoral studies to WW1 and the English food blockade, international (specialising in the decline of European empires) and local history, and autobiography and short stories. Heal lives and works in Hampshire.

Publications

Felt-hatting in Bristol & South Gloucestershire, Part 1, 'The Rise' (978-1-9115921-3-6), ALHA, No. 13, 2013; Part 2, 'The Fall' (978-1-9115921-4-3), ALHA, No. 14, 2013.

Hatters' Trails in South Gloucestershire, WERA & FC&DLHS, 2013.

Sound of Hunger (978-1-9116044-1-9), Unicorn, Uniform, 2018.

The Loss of the Little Mystery, Maritime Archaeological Trust, 2018.

Disappearing (two editions & ebook) (978-1-9161944-0-3), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2019 & 2023.

Reappearing (978-1-9161944-1-0), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2020.

The Four Marks Murders (two editions) (978-1-9161944-2-7), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2020 & 2021.

Ropley's Legacy (978-1-9161944-3-4), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2021.

The Winchester Tales (978-1-9161944-4-1), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2022.

Bad Moon Rising (978-1-9161944-5-8), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2023.

The War of The Raven (978-1-9161944-7-2), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2023.

Saints & Sinners (978-1-9161944-8-9), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2023.

La dernière patrouille de l'UC 61(with Lt. Col. Henri Lesoin), Art et Histoire de Wissant, 2023.

Glimpses of the Famous (978-1-9161944-9-6), Chattaway & Spottiswood, 2025.