Photo: David Shankbone (2009) CC BY 3.0
Sample of authors
Vidal, Gore
The American novelist and essayist Gore Vidal was born at West Point, New York. He was originally christened Eugene Vidal, but in his teens he changed his first name to his maternal grandfather’s surname. Gore Vidal was the only child of the pilot Eugene Luther Vidal and his wife, Nina S. Gore, an actress. He was not close to either. His parents were divorced when Vidal was ten, and although he m...
Photo: Hulton Deutsch / Corbis Historical via Getty Images (1952)
Sample of authors
Crofts, Freeman Wills
Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin, Ireland, as the son of a British army surgeon who died when Croft was still young. Because his mother then married an archdeacon, Croft was brought up in a deeply religious home. He studied engineering, and at the age of seventeen he became an apprentice at the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway where he stayed until 1929 when he left for health...