About the Author

Yorkshire born John Nowell completed his first wing over at the age of fourteen as a member of the Air Training Corps, in a De Havilland Chipmunk. He decided then and there that flying was to be his career. After leaving school, he joined the Royal Air Force but was too late to achieve his ambition of flying Sunderland flying boats. He did serve on some of the great flying boat squadrons, numbers 206,205 and 230, where in addition to his flying duties he was responsible for the squadron records, including the photo albums and the RAF Form 540s - the monthly operational record of the squadron. It was here that John first saw the amazing records of the exploration flights, made in the 1930s, by the flying boat crews who crossed half the world to Australia and the Far East.

In 1966, whilst serving on No. 205 Sqdrn, John flew from England via Salalah to Singapore in a Shakleton bomber. His flight at low level from Salalah via Masirah and Ras Al Hadd gave him his first insight into a country that was to become his home in later years. In 1980 John joined the Royal Flight at Seeb to fly the new Puma helicopters. During his 10 year stay he flew over every part of Oman and in the words of Dr Rodney Salm, "photographed every rock in Oman". In 1994 during a two week period he photographed the entire coastline for a UN sponsored conservation project that was utilised by the Ministry of Commerce and the Office of the Conservation Adviser to His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, to regulate urban planning and the boundaries of National Parks. In 1988 whilst on a routine flight between Sur and Muscat through the Jebel Akhdar, he discovered an unknown collection of fifty 4,000-year-old tombs, some of which were in almost perfect condition. Subsequently, in 1991, he guided a German archaeologist to the same site. Dr Paul Yule's press release made the front page of the English edition of The Times.

John was made a Licenciate of The Royal Photographic Society in 1990 on the basis of the photographs in his first book, A Day Above Oman. His photographic interest in history and archaeology was also instrumental in the location of four-thousand-year-old tombs on a remote plateau in Oman and John was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is also an Upper Freeman of the Guild of Pilots & Navigators and is now based in Dubai where he is working on further books in the A Day Above and Now & Then series.