Douglas Maddon

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Douglas Maddon (1970-) is the pen name of Northern Irish author and teacher David McDowell.

He was born in Belfast in 1970 then went on to Belfast Royal Academy & Merton College, Oxford, whilst contributing to one of his main loves, politics. A believer in unionism, although he left his main party posts to follow a career in teaching History and Politics.

He then began to utilise his gift for literacy writing, by creating The English Department's Whores, a book about the redundancy of a college teacher, and subsequent attempts to continue her lavish lifestyle. Received well at a local level, another book was only a matter of time, and when Arson About came out, it soon became popular over the UK and Ireland. A popular handguide for students, it has been critically acclaimed in Northern Ireland, and has brought his status to a nationwide successor to the Tom Sharpe novels.

Maddon chooses to remain pseudonymous in his writing for a number of reasons, perhaps mainly because of the use of real people and situations in his novels, particularly The English Department Whores which is based on a real institution - even though neither the people nor this institution are given their real names, Maddon maintains that this is done for legal reasons.