Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (1978)
Sample of authors
Bagley, Desmond
British author of thrillers born in Kendal, Cumbria (formerly Westmorland), in northwest England, an area known as the Lake District. His father was a miner who became ill and moved his family to Blackpool when Bagley was about twelve years old. There he ran a boarding house for actors. Desmond Bagley, who suffered from a bad stutter, left school when he was fourteen and worked in odd jobs at a...
Photo: Peter Peitsch (2010) / www.peitschphoto.com
Sample of authors
Grisham, John
American author, lawyer and former politician born in Jonesboro, Arkansas. His father was a construction worker who travelled around the southern United States with his family in search of work. They settled in Southaven, Mississippi, when John Grisham was four. They were stretched for money and Grisham began to take odd jobs as a teenager. He was encouraged by his mother to enrol at a college,...