David Beaty (author)

Beaty died on 4 December 1999 in Slindon, West Sussex. His wife, Betty Campbell Beaty, wrote Winged life : a biography of David Beaty in 2001.

On 10 June 1972, a 90-minute adaptation of Beaty's novel The Temple Tree, scripted by Betty Davies and Michael Spice, was transmitted in BBC Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre slot. Beaty himself subsequently wrote a drama serial for Radio 4 entitled The Magic Carpet. The story of the doomed airship R101, it was transmitted from 27 November 1983 to 8 January 1984 in seven 30-minute episodes.

Already an accomplished novelist, Beaty turned his attention to identifying the possible causes behind aviation accidents attributed to pilot error, enrolling at University College London to read psychology. Having completed the degree course in a single year, rather than the traditional three years, Beaty became a civil servant in 1967 before publishing his first non-fiction work, The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents in 1969. This was followed by The Water Jump: The Story of Transatlantic Flight (1976), The Complete Skytraveller (1979) and Strange Encounters: Mysteries of the Air (1982), before he returned to the subject of his first non-fiction book in The Naked Pilot - The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents (1991). Finally Light Perpetual: Aviators' Memorial Windows appeared in 1995.

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights to Beaty's novel Village of Stars but never produced the film. Another novel of Beaty's was produced as the film Cone of Silence (1960) starring George Sanders.

Arthur David Beaty (28 March 1919 – 4 December 1999) was a British writer, pilot and psychologist notable as a pioneer in the field of human factors, now an integral branch of aviation medicine, which he argued played a central role in aviation accidents attributed to pilot error.

Beaty was born in Hatton, Ceylon on 28 March 1919, the son of a Methodist minister, and was educated at the Kingswood School followed by Merton College, Oxford where he read History and edited Cherwell, a student newspaper. Whilst at Oxford the Second World War broke out prompting him to volunteer for pilot training with Oxford University Air Squadron.