R. D. Wingfield

Rodney David Wingfield was born in Hackney, east London in 1928. He was educated at the Coopers' Company School and during the Second World War was evacuated to Frome, Somerset. Wingfield was exempted from National Service due to poor eyesight and had various office jobs in the East End before joining the Petrofina oil company. His first radio play, Our West Ladyton Branch was accepted by the BBC in 1968 and two more were then commissioned, at which point Wingfield resigned from his job. ==Inspector Frost==

In 1972, Macmillan Publishers invited him to write a book, and he wrote Frost at Christmas. This was rejected and not published until the early 1980s in Canada. Hard Frost was published in 1995, followed by Winter Frost in 1999. ==Other==

In 1982, Leslie Sands played Sergeant Fowler in Wingfield's BBC radio thriller Outbreak of Fear, a murder mystery set in the West Country. In 1987, Bob Peck starred in the Wingfield BBC radio drama Deadfall, about a demolition man whose past catches up with him. The 'winkle' postcard (sent by Inspector Frost) is most probably based on a Donald McGill seaside postcard. After a dispute with the BBC in 1984 he submitted a number of radio plays under the pseudonym "Arthur Jefferson", (the real name of Stan Laurel) one such play being The Killing Season broadcast in six parts that same year and starring Sean Barrett, Michael Jenner, John Hollis, and Allan Cuthbertson; the serial was essentially a palimpsest of his earlier serial Outbreak of Fear. The final of his non-Inspector Frost radio plays was Hate Mail broadcast in 1988. ==Later years==

In 2002, R. D. Wingfield was diagnosed with prostate cancer. In 2011, the first of four new Frost books was published with the approval of the Wingfield family. The books – First Frost, Fatal Frost, Morning Frost, and Frost at Midnight – are published under the name James Henry. In the case of First Frost, this pseudonym refers to James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton, but for the others it refers to Gurbutt only. All the books are now available in ebook format. ==Bibliography==