Chris Heal studied for a PhD at Bristol University when in his sixties. His aim was to show how an unrecognised but important local industry could be reconstructed by using records meant for other purposes: income tax, census, customs, trades union, shipping, religious, planning, national legislation, local courts, apprenticeships and family registration. The result, 500 years of the Avon felt hat industry, received many awards and was reviewed as ‘first-rate, well-written with immensely impressive scholarship’.

He wrote Sound of Hunger in 2018, an acclaimed social biography of the lives of two brothers, WW1 u-boat captains. His research in ten countries sought the motives and personal cost to two young middle-class boys caught up in Germany’s political and militaristic development from Bismarck to Hitler. He also found, interviewed and reunited the brothers’ families in Bavaria and the United States. The book joined German university reading lists for its unusual English view of German history. Three further books followed through public demand: The War of the Raven, Saints and Sinners and, in French, La dernière patrouille de l’UC 61 with Henri Lesoin, all in 2003.

 A semi-fictional autobiography, Disappearing, was published in 2019. It tells of a ‘bolshy pensioner with a mission’ in a slow-burner of covert information, rebellion, escapism, and a high body count. Set in today’s world, a man in later years is upset by his life experiences and decides on a great experiment: to disappear. The security community called his methods ‘subversive’ and tried hard to ban the book.

Reappearing, the sequel to Disappearing, was published in 2020. Heal’s imagined last nomadic journey, based in part on true-life experiences, takes him through the decline of the French empire, the terror of Islamic insurgency and the modern African slave trade. All the time, he follows clues that might lead him to his unknown father. This is an intelligent detective story, wrapped up in a global travel adventure and set against the background of twentieth century history.

In 2020, Heal published The Four Marks Murders following a 100^th birthday request from his mother. It told of twenty carefully researched and almost always true untimely deaths. The book became a local bestseller with over 5,000 copies sold. Heal then wrote two further contributions that became a trilogy of local history:

Ropley’s Legacy, 2021, tells the newly-researched and disturbing history of the forced enclosure of common land by unscrupulous landowners and avaricious local clergy. The effect on the lives of the agricultural workforce was devastating and permanent. In The Winchester Tales, 2022, Gilbert of Bayeux, orphan and a gifted administrator, is called to Winchester from Normandy to oversee the theft of lands from the families of the English who fell at Hastings. He finds his Lord, bishop Odo, the new king’s half-brother, is the most greedy and devious of all.

Heal wrote Bad Moon Rising, in 2023: three novellas which deal with despair in the modern world: a disillusioned Afghanistan veteran, the break down of the NHS and the care sector, and the results of nuclear war in Ukraine.

In 2025, Heal spent a great deal of time in hospital, close to death, believing he would never write again. In recovery, he wrote two autobiographical books, Glimpses of the Famous and eating wildly, to prove himself wrong.

Heal is currently working on two new books with working titles: The Wind Blows, a mystery in which eight people from around the world with no seeming connection are enticed to dinner and an awkward and life-changing evening; and The Goat Boy, a study of the demands of patriotism before The Great War on a youngster from an isolated farm on the Italian / Austrian border who loves his animals more than anyone or anything else.