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...
Sample of authors
Sapper
Pseudonym for Englishman (Herman) Cyril McNeile, who – using the alias Sappar – was one of the best-selling English-language authors in the inter-war years. His simplistic and partisan nationalism, together with racist and fascist ideas, made him controversial already during his lifetime, and have meant that his books about the British officer and superman Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond are still used in...