Tim Heald was born on January 28, 1944, in Dorchester, Dorset, England and died on November 20, 2016.

He was a British author, biographer, journalist and public speaker.

He educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and Balliol College, Oxford, gaining an MA in Modern History in 1965.

Heald wrote over thirty published books, including official biographies of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (The Duke – a Portrait of Prince Philip (1991), Hodder & Stoughton), and HRH Princess Margaret (Princess Margaret – a Life Unravelled (2007), Orion Books).

He was also known for his mystery novels featuring Simon Bognor, special investigator, (10 titles), serialised by Thames TV, and more recently as creator of Dr Tudor Cornwall in a new crime trilogy published by Robert Hale Ltd: Death and the Visiting Fellow (2004), Death and the D’Urbervilles (2005), A Death on the Ocean Wave (2007).

Subsequently, he returned to the newly knighted Simon Bognor and published two further novels Death in the Opening Chapter and Poison at the Pueblo with Creme de la Crime/ Severn House.

Whilst he worked as a journalist, Tim Heald wrote for Punch, The Spectator, The Sunday Times (Atticus column), Daily Express (feature writer 1967-72), The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and was a freelance travel writer.

During the autumn of 2009 he started writing a “Royal Blog” for the Daily Telegraph web-site and was appointed Royal Correspondent by the editor of The Lady (a magazine), Rachel Johnson.

He was also a speaker, he was often a guest on Cunard cruise ships QE2 and Caronia.

Heald was the author of Village Cricket (Little Brown, 2004), on which a Carlton TV series was based.

Heald worked as an academic in creative writing at the University of Tasmania and the University of South Australia between 1997 and 2001.

Heald was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

He resided in Fowey, Cornwall, for fifteen years but then moved to south Somerset where his mother was born and his father is buried.

Tim Heald passed away at 72 years old.