16 Facts About Rodney Dale

Rodney AM Dale was an English author, editor, publisher, and a co-founder and former member of Cambridge Consultants Ltd.

Rodney Dale wrote principally on non-fiction topics, as well as three novels, a number of poems, and pantomimes.

Rodney AM Dale was born in Muswell Hill, North London, to Donald and Celia Dale on 28 November 1933.

Rodney Dale attended The Perse School from 1940 to 1952.

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 Munster, Westphalia, Germany.

Rodney Dale met fellow students Tim Eiloart and David Southward at the University of Cambridge.

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

Rodney Dale served as a trustee of the non-profit Centre for Computing History in Cambridge and the Cambridgeshire Farmland Museum.

Rodney Dale was involved in organising the museum's move to the A10 at Waterbeach from its original site in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire.

Rodney Dale was a Magistrate on the Cambridge City Bench from 1977 to 1984 and was a past member of both Bar Hill and Haddenham Parish Councils.

Rodney Dale left Cambridge Consultants in 1976 to become a full-time writer, both of books and commercial literature.

Rodney Dale wrote The World of Jazz and The Sinclair Story, a biography of the entrepreneur Sir Clive Sinclair.

In 1976, Rodney Dale coined the word "foaf" to describe apocryphal narratives involving someone at some distance from the teller.

Rodney Dale used this word in The Tumour in the Whale to signify that an anecdote in question "has been reported from several quarters, that its provenance is shady, [and] that it is almost certainly a whale-tumour story".

Rodney Dale continued his work on contemporary legends with the publications of It's True.

Rodney Dale died in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire on 29 March 2020, at the age of 86.