Photo: Robert Ahlbom / Forflex
Sample of authors
O'Donnell, Peter
Peter O’Donnell was a British author born in Lewisham, London, to an Irish family. His father was a well-known crime reporter. O’Donnell attended Catford Central School in London, but he soon dropped out and began to write for youth magazines. In 1936, at the age of sixteen, he was employed to write comic strips.
He was drafted in 1938. During the first few years of his military service he was st...
Photo: Francesco Da Vinci/Getty Images (c.1992)
Sample of authors
Gardner, John (f. 1926)
John Edmund Gardner was a British novelist. He was born in the village of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland as the son of a clergyman. He briefly attended Cottham’s Preparatory School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1931, and after the family had moved to Wantage in Berkshire in 1933, King Alfred’s School 1934–1943. He joined the Home Guard at the start of the Second World War and in 1943 the Royal Marin...
