Dale Hurst is a novelist and short story writer, specialising mainly in the historical, crime, mystery and black comedy genres.

Having dabbled with writing fiction from an early age, he independently published his first novel, the Regency era mystery The Berylford Scandals: Lust & Liberty in 2018, followed by a sequel Sin & Secrecy two years later. His short story, Sunday on the Boulevard (with my pet lobster) was published in two anthologies in 2022 and was also longlisted for the Bournemouth Writing Prize.

In 2025, Dale compiled a variety of short stories and poetry into his first-ever collection, Silhouettes. In the same year, his London crime story Cash and a Stranger was featured in Volume One of Veritas Noir by Veritas Entertainment.

Dale’s background is in journalism and his freelance career boasts articles on everything from classical music to cryptocurrency. He also ran a food and travel blog for seven years, reviewing restaurants and hotels both in the UK and across Europe.

Presenter

As a confident public speaker with a background in performance, Dale has had a substantial career in presenting, beginning on radio at university in 2012. Since then, he has presented cooking demos on YouTube, interviewed MPs for BBC Radio, and more recently chaired four seasons of the HQB News official podcast Bournemouth Backchat.

Since 2021, he has presented his writing podcast, The Dale Hurst Writing Show, interviewing authors, playwrights, screenwriters and poets on their specialisms and areas of expertise. Now entering its sixth year, the podcast has featured at Bournemouth Writing Festival and is partnered with The Bournemouth Journal, in collaboration with Bournemouth University.

Journalist

While he much prefers writing fiction, Dale’s career thus far has been in journalism. It started in 2012, when he founded a restaurant critique and travel writing blog called Expensive Tastes, which he kept running until 2020. He trained in Southampton at Solent University, where he worked on a number of high-profile stories, including HM Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the city and the public’s violent reaction to the filming of Immigration Street, both in 2015.

Since graduating, Dale’s reviews, features, and stories have been seen in publications such as Sauce, The Wiltshire Times, and The Chef’s Forum. But most of his recent work comes from HQB News, an online positive news, lifestyle, and human-interest platform, where he served as editor from 2019 until its closure in 2021. At HQB News, Dale interviewed a variety of influential people local to the Bournemouth, Poole, and Christchurch areas in print and on video.

Dale’s last journalistic role was at the international cryptocurrency news website BeInCrypto, which he left in August 2021. While now retired from journalism, he still writes the occasional restaurant review.