JOHN EVAN WESTON DAVIES

According to Wikipedia: "John Evan Weston-Davies (25 February 1909 – 7 April 1996), known as Berkely Mather, was a British writer who wrote fifteen published novels and a book of short stories. He also wrote for radio, television and film.

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[1] and Erle Stanley Gardner,[2] did even better. Ernest Hemingway owned copies of both these novels.[3] 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.[4] 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 with Mather borrowing a copy of Fleming's original novel from his son. Mather also provided uncredited rewrites of the screenplays for From Russia with Love and Goldfinger."