Berkely Mather

John Evan Weston-Davies (25 February 1909 – 7 April 1996), also known as Jasper Davies and published under the name 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.

Shortly before World War I, Mather's family emigrated to Australia, where he received his education. He studied medicine, the family profession, at Sydney University. Finding himself in England without job prospects at the height of the Great Depression, he enlisted in the Royal Horse Artillery, but was not accepted. He therefore applied to join the Indian Army, in which he rose through the ranks, becoming a sergeant at the start of World War II in 1939. He served in the Iraq campaign under William Slim, and ended the war as an acting lieutenant-colonel. After India gained independence in 1947, he rejoined the British Army, serving in the Royal Artillery until he retired in 1959.

He scripted his first TV series, Tales from Soho in the mid-1950s. Produced by Tony Richardson, it featured his detective Inspector Charlesworth (played by John Welsh), who was used again in later productions. Other TV work included African Patrol, Z Cars, The Avengers and the American series I Spy. 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 and Erle Stanley Gardner, did even better. Ernest Hemingway owned copies of both these novels. 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. His last three novels were a 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.

James Bond film producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman purchased the film rights to The Pass Beyond Kashmir for Columbia Pictures in 1963. Sean Connery and Honor Blackman were to star. Production was to have begun in late 1964 in Britain and on location in the Far East.