The life of James Stevenson on one page
On the Farm in Portugal. 1967
James Stevenson was born in November 1934. At the age of seven he saw a Focke-Wulf 190 at bungalow-chimney height seconds after it had dropped a bomb on the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. This incident provided the inspiration for his novel Dartmouth Conspiracy.
Twelve years later, after training in Canada during National Service, James earned RAF wings at the age of nineteen and was qualified to fly the 500mph De Havilland Vampire, one of the RAF’s earliest single-seat jet fighters.
After leaving the RAF he studied agriculture, worked in Spain, moved to Portugal and became director of an agricultural company near Lisbon. As a member of the Lisbon Players he appeared in twelve amateur productions. Following the Portuguese revolution in 1974 James returned to England to set up an import company handling ceramics from Portugal and Spain.
In recent years James has taken part in four radio dramas for BBC Radio Devon and divides his time between the Kingsbridge Amateur Theatrical Society and his love of writing, which includes translating tourist guide books from Portuguese into English. His first short story, Flowers for Judy was published by Women’s Illustrated in 1960 and another story, The System, won second prize in a 1993 Writers Monthly competition. Inspired by my life-long love of poetry James won first prize in a Waterstone’s poetry competition in 2009 with a witty celebration of Robert Burns’s 250th birthday entitled to the Poet's muse
He has published two novels - Dartmouth Conspiracy and Fly the Storm. In his third book, still under construction, he shares exciting and amusing experiences while learning to fly.
James lives in Devon with his wife.
Click here to read an interview with James.
Listen to The Cowman - a short story by James Stevenson (based on an incident described in Dartmouth Conspiracy) by clicking here!
At an airshow with old RAF friends in 2005 : 3 airline pilots, a business man, a teacher, a judge and a tailor's dummy - all retired.
