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David Wheldon (1950 - 7 January 2021) was an English writer and medical doctor.

Biography
David Wheldon was born in 1950 in the mining village of Moira, Leicestershire. He attended the Quaker school at Sidcot, Somerset, before studying medicine at Bristol University. He was married to the artist Sarah Longlands. He died unexpectedly at the age of seventy in January 2021 at his Bedford home.

Writing
Wheldon's first novel, The Viaduct, an allegorical tale of a man who leaves his past behind to walk along a railway track, was published by The Bodley Head in 1983. It won the Triple First Award in a year when Graham Greene and William Trevor were the final judges, and was runner-up for the Whitbread Award. Three further novels followed with The Course of Instruction (The Bodley Head), A Vocation (The Bodley Head) and At the Quay (Barrie & Jenkins).

Wheldon's first three novels are often described as allegorical and Kafkesque. Wheldon has written that he first read Kafka after completing The Viaduct and an early version of A Vocation.

He published several volumes of poetry including Night Altitude, The Uncompliant Stranger, The Muffled Drum, A Road Assumed, Days and Orders, and Language in a Narrow Place. The poems in Uncompliant Stranger and in Days and Orders are illustrated with drawings by his wife, the artist Sarah Longlands.

After a couple of decades with no published fiction, from 2017 his short stories began to appear in The Woven Tale Press, Confingo, and Nightjar Press. His short story collection The Guiltless Bystander was published by Confingo Publishing in July 2022.

His personal website contains many uncollected short stories and poem