James Richard Abe "Jim" Bailey, CBE, DFC (23 October 1919 – 29 February 2000) was an Anglo-South African World War II fighter pilot, writer, poet and publisher. He was the founder of Drum, the most widely read magazine in Africa.[2]
In 1951, he provided financial backing to Bob Crisp to start a magazine called African Drum based in Cape Town, South Africa, and aimed at a Black readership, but as readership dropped, Bailey took full control. The monthly magazine was renamed to simply Drum and the head office moved to Johannesburg. Anthony Sampson was appointed editor.[2] Bailey also founded in 1955 the Golden City Post,[2][5] the country's first black Sunday tabloid.[6]
The God-Kings and Titans
Bailey's 1973 book The God-Kings and the Titans: The New World Ascendancy in Ancient Times was a controversial work on pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, which claimed that thousands of years before Columbus Mediterranean sea voyagers among other peoples from the Old World landed on both the Atlantic and Pacific shores of America.[7] The book has been referenced by many pseudohistoric writers.
Death
Bailey died in 2000, aged 80, from colon cancer. He was survived by his second wife, Barbara (née Epstein, whom he married in 1962),[3] and by four children. One is the artist Beezy Bailey.[8][9]