Colum Hayward is the grandson of the medium Grace Cooke, who with her guide White Eagle founded the White Eagle Lodge in 1936. In 1998 he wrote Eyes of the Spirit: Working with a Spiritual Teacher about his experience of working with the teacher White Eagle. He has a Cambridge PhD anhas also written a lengthy historical preface to Arthur Conan Doyle's Book of the Beyond, a work detailing the connection between the Polaires and the White Eagle Lodge, and has contributed chapters to The View and The View Beyond, which are about the spiritual legacy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Francis Bacon.