Berkely Mather

Berkely Mather (25 February 1909 – 7 March 1996) was a British author who published fifteen novels and a book of short stories. He also wrote for radio, television and the movies. Berkely Mather was in fact the pseudonym of John Evan Weston-Davies, whose family, shortly before World War I, emigrated to Australia, where he received his education. Finding himself in England without prospects at the height of the Great Depression, he enlisted in the Royal Horse Artillery, but failed to gain a commission. He therefore applied to join the Indian Army, in which he rose through the ranks, becoming a sergeant at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. He served in the Iraq campaign under Slim, and ended the war as an acting lieutenant-colonel. After India gained independence in 1947, he rejoined the British Army, serving in the Royal Artillery until he retired in 1959. Mather's first novel, The Achilles Affair (1959), was a minor best-seller, and his second, The Pass Beyond Kashmir (1960), which received glowing reviews from Ian Fleming and Erle Stanley Gardner, did even better. Ernest Hemingway owned copies of both these novels. Mather's espionage thrillers can be read separately, but are linked to each other by recurring characters, in particular the sardonic and resourceful British agent Idwal Rees, who appears in The Pass Beyond Kashmir, The Terminators and Snowline. The author's military experience and years spent abroad give his work richness and depth. His last three novels were an ambitious trilogy that followed the fortunes of the Stafford family in the Near and Far East from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Two of Mather's early books stand somewhat apart from the rest in that they are spin-offs from his work in other media. Geth Straker (1962) started out as a radio serial, hence the tag on the front cover: "Further daring exploits from the log of radio's trouble hunting mariner". The book contains four stories. Genghis Khan (1965) is a novelisation of the 1965 film of the same name, for which he had written the original story. Mather's other motion picture credits include The Long Ships and Dr. No. James Bond film producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman purchased the film rights to The Pass Beyond Kashmir for Columbia Pictures in 1963. Sean Connery and Honor Blackman were to star. Production was to have begun in late 1964 in Britain and on location in the Far East.