Donald Hugh Northcote was born on October 19th 1927 in Croydon, Surrey. By  his first wife Audrey he has four children. He has seven grandchildren.

He was educated at Whitgift Middle School, Croydon, and King’s College, London University. His military service, just after the end of the war, was in the RAF as Ground Radar Mechanic. During this time he met his wife-to-be Audrey, starting a very close relationship which lasted until her death 38 years later.

He originally intended a Medical career, but on demobilisation from the RAF (delayed due to the Berlin Airlift, since at that time he was radar mechanic watch-commander on the B-slave of the Southeastern Gee-chain navigational aid) decided to read Honours English with the idea of possibly obtaining a Science degree at a later date. He hoped thus to reconcile his literary and scientific interests by specialising in the communication of technical information and ideas. Electronics was one of his earliest enthusiasms, and at one time he was obtaining simultaneous publication of poetry and technical articles based on his own circuit developments.

After postgraduate studies in Education (during this course the Group underwent a full-scale IQ test, in which he came top at 156 points) he spent a year teaching ("casting imitation pearls before real swine!"), and then entered the Electronics industry (Marconis followes by Solartron) in which he had twelve years varied experience of Technical Authorship, Publications, Systems Engineering and Marketing.

His next position, Manager: Publicity Services for Herbert-Ingersoll, introduced him to the world of heavy engineering and machine-tools. It afforded unique opportunities for contributing to the development of a new and advanced Company, and for visiting North America to study the marketing methods of the Ingersoll Milling Machine Company. It also provided some outstanding PR and Publicity experience, including film, TV, Press occasions and the planning of a Publicity/Communications programme in conjunction with the J Walter Thompson organisation. The broad objective of this activity was to influence the background against which decisions to buy capital equipment are made - to create awareness of the new firm, promote the methodology and establish reputational values.
He set up and established in-house resources and standards for the production of Marketing proposals, System Study reports and other special publications.

Despite its great promise, the Company went into receivership in July 1972 in the machine-tool depression following the Rolls-Royce débâcle.

He then embarked on a few months’ participation in an overseas venture as an investing Regional Director. Due to a corrupt chairman, this turned into a disaster from which he returned to the UK with his family, bereft of house, job and capital! There followed a brief and intense phase of recovery and re-establishment, after which he joined Pitmans Training Services Division. This interesting re-involvement in the field of education enabled him to devise and introduce some new concepts, including the Voice-Link tutoring system.

His move to the Water Research Centre in 1975 provided stimulating experience of multi-disciplinary research, Conference organisation and Information Sciences.

His initial involvement in technical communication, and the range of his experience in a variety of posts, seemed to find a logical outcome in his final position - Publications Manager for Shell International’s Computer Applications and Technology Division. It also harnessed his long-standing interests in computing and creative writing. A further benefit was that it subsequently provided the opportunity for more than four years’ post-retirement Consultancy work in these areas. During this time, a widower, he met and married his second wife, Margaret.

After retirement, he wrote a book on aspects of computers in society. It didn’t get published. However, in 1999 he incorporated some selections from his book into his website: https://www.angelfire.com/de2/northcote.
Computing had become one of his main hobbies in retirement and he became President of a Computing Club.

In February 2008 he was registered as "severely sight impaired/blind". However, he had some remaining sight and was able still to use the computer with the aid of special software, electronic magnification and optical devices.