David Shears

David Shears was a Washington correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph from 1961 to 1965, and, after a long assignment as Bonn bureau chief in Germany, from 1981 until his retirement in 1986. His nonfiction books are Paddle America (1996, co-authored with his son, Nicholas Shears), Ocracoke: Its History and People (1989), and The Ugly Frontier (1970)

Shears served in the British navy during WWII and graduated from the University of Oxford in England. He worked briefly as a journalist for the Bristol Evening Post before becoming a foreign correspondent for Reuters (1951-1961) and joining the staff of the Daily Telegraph. His journalism covered Cold War spies, the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, and the civil rights movement in the U.S. After his retirement in 1896, he stayed on in DC, where he was active with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and volunteered with an international student exchange program, Youth for Understanding.