Welcome

to the

World of Dathan Charles

Author and friend

          Like Dathan Charles, Dione M. Coumbe has an acute aversion to being photographed. This is a rare sighting at the Quality Inn, Chicago, USA in November 1997 with pal Manu, Curator of the African-American Museum.

          Much like the title character of Dathan Charles, the Dione M. Coumbe story is full of rich cultural backgrounds, music, art, entrepreneurship and shades of mystery, intrigue and controversy. Born in London, Coumbe came of age in post World War II Europe. Circumstance and unbridled restlessness and curiousity launched her on an odyssey, which ultimately took her from Fleet Street to Marseilles, Naples, Gibraltar, Cartagena, Casablanca, Tangier and many ports of call and destinations of opportunity in between.

          At an early age Coumbe was told, 'If you want to be a writer, go and get some experience of life!" The advice was taken to heart and she became a vagabond adventurer then a magnet attracting all kinds of characters and business ventures. One of these was a news agency and it was on a chequered trip en route to the Biafran conflict she arrived in Gibraltar. Here, with a partner, she became involved in the bar business and quickly became known to the thousands who passed through from all over the world for her adroitness in handling trouble with off-beat humour. Not so well known were her other financial interests of smuggling liquor and ladies' wigs and card playing. This led to the win of a barbers' shop on the night they shut the frontier to Spain in 1968 in a card school. Admitting defeat with scissors and clippers, it was sold at a profit very shortly after.

           Returning to England, Coumbe specialised in creating businesses, selling them and moving on. These included restaurants, a chain of florist shops, a road haulage company and other concerns of various sizes. This happened against a background of constant sexual discrimination and Coumbe fought banks, accountants and government departments eventually to moral and legal triumph.

          In the mid-1990's at the age of 48, Coumbe completed her degree at the University of Kent at Canterbury and became an LL.B (Hons.). Finding age discrimination was now the major impediment to a career in law, she created an international genealogy consultancy utilising her lifelong study of British and European history wherever she was in the world, knowledge of law and family history and genealogical research. She began contributing articles on her subjects to various magazines in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the UK and also became a professional book reviewer.

          All was going extremely well when in 1999 she was diagnosed with malignant breast cancer. Her response when told was, "I haven't time to die. I've still got too much to do." As soon as she was on her feet again 'Dathan Charles' was completed and published, then a month later she formed a new company, Book Publicity Limited, designed to offer 'conception to completion' for other authors, wherever they may reside.

          In 2008, she's still here, in remission, and still a maverick believing in an individual's right to freedom and fighting in the only way she knows how. As a winner!