Rodney Dale

Rodney A. M. Dale (28 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was an English author, editor, publisher, and a co founder and former member of Cambridge Consultants Ltd. He wrote principally on non fiction topics (biography, technology, computing, jazz, illustration, and folklore), as well as three novels, a number of poems, and pantomimes.

Dale was born in Muswell Hill (North London) to Donald and Celia Dale in 1933. In 1939, with the approach of war, the family left London for Cambridge, where Dale was to develop lifelong interests in writing, engineering, printing, publishing, and music. He 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 Münster, Westphalia (BAOR12), Germany. Having earlier (1950) been awarded a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, he matriculated at Queens' College, Cambridge in 1955 and studied natural sciences. In 1959 he established Polyhedron Services, a design and print company, which he developed for four years.

It was at the University of Cambridge that Dale had met Tim Eiloart and David Southward, then fellow students and with whom he would later establish Cambridge Consultants Ltd., the first independent research and development organisation in the United Kingdom. In 1963 he joined Cambridge Consultants full time, heading several design projects before ultimately assuming the role of the organisation's personnel and training manager. In 1976 Dale left Cambridge Consultants to become a full time writer, both of books and commercial literature. In 1976 Dale coined the word "foaf" (for "friend of a friend") to describe apocryphal narratives involving someone at some distance from the teller. He 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." As the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) has since noted, "Dale pointed out that contemporary legends always seemed to be about someone just two or three steps from the teller – a boyfriend's cousin, a co worker's aunt, or a neighbor of the teller's mechanic"; in recognition of this concept, the ISCLR in 1985 named its quarterly newsletter FoafTale News. Brunvand holds that "international students of urban legends have accepted FOAF with enthusiasm as a shorthand reference to the claimed source of stories." "Foaf" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2009. Dale continued his work on contemporary legends with the publications of It's True It Happened to a Friend: A Collection of Urban Legends (1984) and The Wordsworth Book of Urban Legend: Tall Tales for Our Times (2005). With colleagues, Dale in 1984 created Business Literature Services Ltd. (now known as Flag Communication Ltd.), a publishing house devoted to business related writing, and singlehandedly established Fern House Publishing in 1990. In addition, between 1992 and 1994 Dale served as series editor and writer for eight Discoveries & Inventions books for the British Library. He also wrote three novels: About Time (1995), The Secret World of Zoë Golding (2010), and The New Life of Hannah Brooks (2013). He also from time to time performed a one man show called "Hello, Mrs Fish."

Dale served as a trustee of the non profit Centre for Computing History in Cambridge. He was also a long serving trustee of the Cambridgeshire Farmland Museum, now to be found on the A10 at Waterbeach, which shares a site with the ancient monument, Denny Abbey. Dale played a crucial part in organising the Museum's move from its original site in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, to its present location. He 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.