Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex (2015)
Sample of authors
Parsons, Tony
English author and journalist, born and grew up as the only child in a working-class family in Romford, Essex. When Tony Parsons was five years old the family moved to Billericay, also in Essex, where he grew up. He attended Barstable Grammar School in Basildon, which he left at the age of 16 with rotten grades. In the years immediately after that, he had several short, menial jobs, including a...
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...
