Military service As part of
National Service, Knight was
commissioned into the
Royal Army Medical Corps on 3 September 1956 as a
lieutenant. On 12 September 1956, he transferred from the National Service List to the Regular Army and was given seniority in the rank of lieutenant from 29 August 1955. He was promoted to
captain on 12 September 1956 with seniority from 29 August 1956. He ceased to belong to the reserve on 12 September 1964.
Medical and legal career Having graduated in 1954, Knight became a
pre-registration house officer. He undertook one six-month job in medicine and one in surgery. He was then a
Senior House Officer specialising in
pathology from 1955 to 1956. He served in the
British Army as a medical officer specialising in pathology from 1956 to 1959. Upon returning to the United Kingdom and leaving the army, he began lecturing. From 1959 to 1962, he was a lecturer in forensic medicine at the
University of London. He was a
senior lecturer at the
University of Newcastle from 1965 to 1968, during which time he also became a barrister. He then returned to his
alma mater, the University of Wales, as a senior lecturer. He was promoted to
reader in 1976 and to Professor of Forensic Pathology in 1980. He retired in 1996 becoming
Emeritus Professor of the university. He served as a
Home Office pathologist from 1965 to 1996. In his thirty-one years in that role, he conducted over 25,000
autopsies. He was involved in a number of high-profile cases, including that of the serial killers
Fred and
Rosemary West, and the first use of DNA to confirm the identity of a body, that of
Karen Price in 1989.
Author He has been writing since before 1963, when his first crime novel was published. Since then, he has written about thirty books, including contemporary crime fiction, historical novels about Wales, biography, non-fiction popular works on forensic medicine, twelve medico-legal textbooks and the
Crowner John Mysteries series of 12th-century historical mysteries featuring one of the earliest (fictional) coroners in England. In addition, he has written scripts for radio and television dramas and documentaries, including the forensic series
The Expert starring
Marius Goring, in the 1970s. He has contributed to many other textbooks and has edited several medical journals - he was Managing Editor of Elsevier's
Forensic Science International, the leading international publication in the field. He is a founder member of The Medieval Murderers, a select group of historical crime-writers within the
Crime Writers' Association, who give presentations at literary festivals, libraries and bookshops, to promote their work amongst the public. He is also one of the non-fiction judges for the annual 'Dagger' Awards of the Crime Writers' Association and a regular reviewer of crime books for the Internet site Tangled Web. ==Honours and decorations==