Biography

Nicholas Rhea was born on May 18, 1936 in Glaisdale, North Yorkshire, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Heartbeat (1992), HeartBeat: Changing Places (1999) and Britain's Best Drives (2009). He was married to Rhoda Smith. He died on April 21, 2017 in Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, England, UK.

Nicholas Rhea is a pseudonym used by Peter Walker who was a serving police officer at the time when he started writing the books from which Heartbeat is derived. He has now retired.

As a young policeman, he wrote a book of funny stories about working the night shift, but publishers weren't interested. Discouraged, he stopped writing. Years later, he was in a pub. Knowing that Walker had done some writing, the landlord asked him to give some advice to another customer who had written some stories. Walker asked the writer, "What kind of stories are they?" The reply was "It's a collection of funny stories about being a vet." The hopeful writer was Alf Wight. "There's no market for Yorkshire humor", Walker told him. Wight ignored that advice; using the pseudonym James Herriot, he wrote "All Creatures Great and Small". Encouraged by Wight's success, Walker wrote a new novel about the trials and tribulations of a rural Yorkshire policeman; it was the first of about 35 books in his "Constable" series.

Other pen-names include Andrew Arncliffe, Christopher Coram, Tom Ferris, and James Ferguson.

For many years he wrote a column, "Countryman's Diary", in the North Yorkshire newspaper Darlington & Stockton Times. After his death, his youngest daughter Sarah continued this column, as "Countryman's Daughter", in the Malton Gazette & Herald.