Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, author of detective stories, as well as a writer and a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio. Knox had attended Eton College and won several scholarships at Balliol College, Oxford. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1912 and was appointed chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, but he left in 1917 upon his conversion to Catholicism. In 1918 he was ordained a Catholic priest. Knox wrote many books of essays and novels. Directed by his religious superiors, he re-translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into English, using Hebrew and Greek sources, beginning in 1936. He died on 24 August 1957 and his body was brought to Westminster Cathedral. Bishop Craven celebrated the requiem mass, at which Father Martin D'Arcy, a Jesuit, preached the panegyric. Knox was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's Church, Mells.

Cyril Hare was the pseudonymn of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark who was the third son of Henry Herbert Gordon Clark of Mickleham Hall, a merchant in the wine and spirit trade in the family firm of Matthew Clark & Sons. Having spent most of his formative years in the country where he learned to hunt, shoot and fish, he was educated at St Aubyn's, Rottingdean and Rugby, where he won a prize for writing English verse, before reading history at New College, Oxford, where he gained a first class degree. His family tradition indicated a legal career and he was duly called to the bar in 1924 and he joined the firm of famed lawyer Ronald Oliver and went on to practice in the civil and criminal courts in and around London. He was 36 when he began his writing career and he picked his pseudonymn from Hare Court, where he worked, and Cyril Mansions, Battersea, where he lived after he had married Mary Barbara Lawrence in 1933. The couple had one son and two daughters. His first literary endeavours were short, flippant sketches for Punch magazine and he had articles published in the Illustrated London News and The Law Journal. His first detective novel, 'Tenant for Death' was published in 1937 and it was called 'an engaging debut'. During the early years of World War II he toured as a judge's marshall and he used his experiences as the basis for his fourth novel 'Tragedy at Law', which was published in 1942. In that same year he became a civil servant with the Director of Public Prosecutions and in the latter stages of the war he worked in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, where his experiences proved invaluable when writing 'With a Bare Bodkin' in 1946. He was appointed county court judge for Surrey in 1950 and he spent his time between travelling the circuit trying civil cases and writing his detective fiction. In addition to these two strings to his bow, he was a noted public speaker and was often in demand by a wide variety of societies. But his workload did curtail his literary output, which was also hampered by the fact that he did not use a typewriter, and his reputation, very good as it is in the field of detective fiction, stands on nine novels and a host of short stories. He also wrote a children's book, 'The Magic Bottle' in 1946 and a play, 'The House of Warbeck' in 1955. He has left two enduting characters in Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard, who featured in three novels, and Francis Pettigrew, an amateur sleuth, who also featured in three novels. In addition the two appeared together in two other novels, 'Tragedy at Law' (1942) and 'He Should Have Died Hereafter' (1958). Having suffered from tuberculosis for some time, he died at his home near Boxhill, Surrey on 25 August 1958, aged only 57. After his death Michael Gilbert introduced a fine collection of his short stories entitled 'The Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare', in which he paid due tribute to a fellow lawyer and mystery writer. Gerry Wolstenholme June 2011

John Robert Stuart Pringle used several pen names. His principle pseudonym was Gerald Verner. In his early writing days he used the name Donald Stuart, under which name he wrote 44 stories for the Sexton Blake Library as well as six stories for Union Jack and three for the Thriller magazine. In addition he wrote two stage plays, 'Sexton Blake' and 'The Shadow', two films, 'The Man Outside' (1933) and 'The Shadow' (1933) under the Stuart name. He became a hugely successful thriller writer, producing more than 120 novels that were translated in 35 languages. He also used the pseudonyms Thane Leslie, Derwent Steele and Nigel Vane.

Francis Henry Durbridge was an English playwright and author born in Hull. In 1938, he created the character Paul Temple for the BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple. A crime novelist and detective, the gentlemanly Temple solved numerous crimes with the help of Steve Trent, a Fleet Street journalist who later became his wife. The character proved enormously popular and appeared in 16 radio serials and later spawned a 64-part big-budget television series (1969-71) and radio productions, as well as a number of comic strips, four feature films and various foreign radio productions. Francis Durbridge also had a successful career as a writer for the stage and screen. His most successful play, Suddenly at Home, ran in London’s West End for over a year.

John Bude was a pseudonym used by Ernest Carpenter Elmore who was a British born writer. He was born in 1901 and, as a boarder, he attended Mill Hill School, leaving in 1919 and moving on to Cheltenham where he attended a secretarial college and where he learned to type. After that he spent several years as games master at St Christopher School in Letchworth where he also led the school's dramatic activities. This keen interest in the theatre led him to join the Lena Ashwell Players as stage manager and he took their productions around the country. He also acted in plays produced at the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead, where he lived for a time. He honed his writing skills, whenever he had a moment to spare, in the various dressing rooms that he found himself in. He eventually returned to Maidstone, the town of his birth, and during the Second World War he ran his local Home Guard unit as he had been deemed unfit to serve in the forces. He later lived in Loose, Kent, and after that near Rye, East Sussex, and enjoyed golf and painting but never learned to drive although that did not stop him apparently offering advice to his wife when she was driving! He had met his wife, Betty, when producing plays back in Maidstone and they married in 1933. After becoming a full-time writer, he wrote some 30 crime fiction novels, many featuring his two main series characters Superintendent Meredith and Inspector Sherwood. He began with 'The Cornish Coast Murder' in 1935 and his final two crime novels, 'A Twist of the Rope' and 'The Night the Fog Came Down' were published posthumously in 1958. He was a founder member of the Norfolk-based Crime Writers Association (CWA) in 1953 and was a co-organiser of the Crime Book Exhibition that was one of the CWA's early publicity initiatives. He was a popular and hard-working member of the CWA's committee from its inception through to May 1957. Under his own name he also wrote a number of fantasy novels, the most well-known of which is 'The Lumpton Gobbelings' (1954). In addition he wrote a children's book, 'The Snuffly Snorty Dog' (1946). He was admitted to hospital in Hastings on 6 November 1957, having just delivered his what turned out to be his final manuscript to his publisher, for a routine operation but he died two days later. Fellow British crime writer Martin Edwards comments, "Bude writes both readably and entertainingly. His work may not have been stunning enough to belong with the greats, but there is a smoothness and accomplishment about even his first mystery, 'The Cornish Coast Murder', which you don't find in many début mysteries." Interestingly he was the dedicatee of 'The Case of the Running Mouse' (1944) by his friend Christopher Bush. The dedication stated, 'May his stature, and his circulation, increase.' NB: He was not born on 1 January but the system does not allow a date of birth without a month and date so it defaults to 1 January.

Selwyn Jepson (1899–1989) was a British author, whose father was the mystery/detective author Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863–1938. His mother was Frieda (nee Holmes), daughter of the musician Henry Holmes and his sister Margaret (1907–2003), also a novelist, was later the mother of Fay Weldon. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and the Sorbonne in Paris. He was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Tank Corps in 1918, but never fought in combat. He travelled throughout Europe after the end of World War I and, around this same time, began writing professionally. After enjoying some success with short stories, he decided to make writing his career, completing his first novel, 'The Qualified Adventurer' (1922); this novel which was filmed in 1925. He travelled throughout Europe during the 1920s and 1930s and this enabled him to develop a wide circle of acquaintances across the continent plus an extensive knowledge of European politics. In addition, he acquired a fluency in the French language. By the outbreak of World War II he had published a good number of mystery novels and he had been screenwriter and occasionally director on 10 films, beginning with 'For Love of You' (1933). His writing career came to a temporary halt when war broke out for he was recruited for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), mainly because of his knowledge of continental Europe. In his SOE role, Captain (later Major) Selwyn Jepson was the recruiting officer for the independent French section, designated 'F Section'. In this role he was spoken of as one of SOE's 'most skilled craftsmen' and it was said that he was SOE's senior recruiting officer. When interviewed later by the Imperial War Museum he remarked, "I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men. Men usually want a mate with them. Men don't work alone, their lives tend to be always in company with other men. There was opposition from most quarters until it went up to Churchill, whom I had met before the war. He growled at me, 'What are you doing?' I told him and he said, 'I see you are using women to do this,' and I said, 'Yes, don't you think it is a very sensible thing to do?' and he said, 'Yes, good luck to you.' That was my authority!" After his wartime service he returned to writing with 'Riviera Love Story' (1948) being his first post-war novel. And in 1950 his short story 'Man Running' was filmed by director Alfred Hitchcock as 'Stage Fright' with Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich and Michael Wilding. He continued with his mystery novels and in 1954 he was screenwriter for three films, 'The Red Dress', 'The Last Moment' and 'Forever My Heart'. In addition he was responsible for some of the scripts for the series 'The Adventures of Sir Lancelot', which began in 1956. The BBC also produced a number of his works, such as 'The Golden Dart' and 'The Hungry Spider'. In later life he resided at Far House, Farther Common, Liss, Hants, by which time he was a well-known mystery/detective author and screenwriter. Arguably his best known work was 'Keep Murder Quiet' (1940) and the Eve Gill novel series; Gill was a young sleuth frequently dealing with problems caused by her liquor-smuggling father. He was also portrayed in film and in various books through his experiences in SOE during the war. An example of this is in 'Carve Her Name With Pride' by R J Minney with Jepson's connection being that he was responsible for approving Violette Szabo, whose World War II exploits and tragic death were the subject of the book and film of that name. He is also featured in Sebastian Faulks' novel ''Charlotte Gray'. In later life he was a keen book collector and had an extensive art collection. He died in his 90th year. Gerry Wolstenholme

Full name: Emma ("Emmuska") Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi was a Hungarian-British novelist, best remembered as the author of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1905). Baroness Orczy's sequels to the novel were less successful. She was also an artist, and her works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. Her first venture into fiction was with crime stories. Among her most popular characters was The Old Man in the Corner, who was featured in a series of twelve British movies from 1924, starring Rolf Leslie. Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary, as the only daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a noted composer and conductor, and his wife Emma. Her father was a friend of such composers as Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod. Orczy moved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then to London, learning to speak English at the age of fifteen. She was educated in convent schools in Brussels and Paris. In London she studied at the West London School of Art. Orczy married in 1894 Montague Barstow, whom she had met while studying at the Heatherby School of Art. Together they started to produce book and magazine illustrations and published an edition of Hungarian folktales. Orczy's first detective stories appeared in magazines. As a writer she became famous in 1903 with the stage version of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Julian Gustave Symons is primarily remembered as a master of the art of crime writing. However, in his eighty-two years he produced an enormously varied body of work. Social and military history, biography and criticism were all subjects he touched upon with remarkable success, and he held a distinguished reputation in each field. His novels were consistently highly individual and expertly crafted, raising him above other crime writers of his day. It is for this that he was awarded various prizes, and, in 1982, named as Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America - an honour accorded to only three other English writers before him: Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and Daphne Du Maurier. He succeeded Agatha Christie as the president of Britain's Detection Club, a position he held from 1976 to 1985, and in 1990 he was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the British Crime Writer. Symons held a number of positions prior to becoming a full-time writer including secretary to an engineering company and advertising copywriter and executive. It was after the end of World War II that he became a free-lance writer and book reviewer and from 1946 to 1956 he wrote a weekly column entitled "Life, People - and Books" for the Manchester Evening News. During the 1950s he was also a regular contributor to Tribune, a left-wing weekly, serving as its literary editor. He founded and edited 'Twentieth Century Verse', an important little magazine that flourished from 1937 to 1939 and he introduced many young English poets to the public. He has also published two volumes of his own poetry entitled 'Confusions about X', 1939, and 'The Second Man', 1944. He wrote hie first detective novel, 'The Immaterial Murder Case', long before it was first published in 1945 and this was followed in 1947 by a rare volume entitled 'A Man Called Jones' that features for the first time Inspector Bland, who also appeared in Bland Beginning. These novles were followed by a whole host of detective novels and he has also written many short stories that were regularly published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In additin there are two British paperback collections of his short stories, Murder! Murder! and Francis Quarles Investigates, which were published in 1961 and 1965 resepctively.

Edith Caroline Rivett (who wrote under the pseudonyms E.C.R. Lorac, Carol Carnac, Carol Rivett, and Mary le Bourne) was a British crime writer. She was born in Hendon, Middlesex (now London). She attended the South Hampstead High School, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. She was a member of the Detection Club. She was a very prolific writer, having written forty-eight mysteries under her first pen name, and twenty-three under her second. She was an important author of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.