by Mike Ripley
A bitter attack in the Daily Telegraph3 ostensibly reporting on the publication of his Somali pirate thriller Those in Peril (which the journalist covering the story said was ‘the most awful book I have ever read’) posed the question, in classic when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife mode: ‘Just who, exactly, reads Wilbur Smith novels, with their rollicking formula of violent lust, lusty violence and gung-ho derring-do? I only ask because his 30-year Ryder [sic] Haggard-meets-Razzle oeuvre has notched up sales of more than 120 million and demographically speaking they can’t all be hormonal schoolboys, priapic squaddies who never quite made the SAS and London’s (undoubtedly hormonal) mayor, Boris Johnson, who is, apparently, a fan.’
Smith’s answer, as reported, was simply: ‘Real men’.
In 2014 Wilbur Smith changed publishers (after 50 years with his original one) and began to write in partnership with younger thriller writers Tom Cain and Giles Kristian, though he continued to write his popular series set in Ancient Egypt and Pharaoh was published in September 2016.
ALAN WILLIAMS
It had been naïve, he realised, to have assumed that Ryderbeit’s talents could be purchased merely with the promise of money. The man’s experience had probably convinced him that a plan on this scale was not complete – or at least not adequately insured – without the odd necessary killing.
– The Tale of the Lazy Dog, 1970
If there was a ‘bad boy’ among the British thriller writers who bloomed in the Swinging Sixties, it was probably Alan Williams – and he would probably have enjoyed the notoriety of such a title.
Alan Emlyn Williams, the son of actor and playwright Emlyn Williams, was born in 1935 and educated at Stowe, Grenoble and Heidelberg universities before reading modern languages at King’s College Cambridge, from which he graduated in 1957. He was later to express his disappointment at ‘being the only Cambridge student in the Fifties not to be recruited, or even approached, by either the KGB or MI6’. He explained this by saying ‘I behaved so badly they each must have thought I’d already been signed up by the other’. His first job was with Radio Free Europe in Munich (a station funded by the US Government, i.e. the CIA) but he soon returned to England and settled on a career in print journalism, first with the Western Mail, then The Guardian and then as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Express. As a reporter he covered troubled hot spots and war zones from Algeria and Vietnam to Northern Ireland, all of which provided material for his thrillers.
His first novel, Long Run South, written when he was 26, was published in that extremely fruitful year of 1962 and was a runner-up for that year’s John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize. His second, Barbouze, received extremely good reviews as an intelligent and compassionate thriller and his third, Snake Water (for which Williams designed the dust-jacket of the hardback) was a major entry in the adventure thriller stakes, set in a South America Williams had never visited.
Such was the pace of the action in the book that few, if any, critics commented on the unusual geography of the ‘banana republic’ described. Questions of dubious topography did not concern the author who always said he took comfort from the example of Eric Ambler – a friend of Williams’ family – who proudly admitted to writing about Istanbul years before he ever went there.1
By the 1970s, a new Alan Williams thriller was a major publishing event and his choice of controversial themes in The Beria Papers and Gentleman Traitor at a time when the Cold War was still chilly, guaranteed publicity and window displays in High Street bookshops. Those novels drew praise from fellow thriller writer John Gardner who declared them ‘both ahead of their time’ and it was said that the new superstar from America, Robert Ludlum, was also a fan, particularly of Williams’ last full-length novel Holy of Holies (1980) which concerned an anti-Islamic Soviet plot to crash an aircraft into the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
Most of Williams’ fictional heroes were disillusioned young journalists or aspiring writers, though none were actually heroic and things usually ended badly for them. In fact, most of Williams’ thrillers had bleak endings, although his villains often survive to fight another day. Whilst readers may struggle to remember the names of any of his heroes (nearly all based on Williams himself), he created two memorable villains, appearing in several books, in the form of Rhodesian mercenary Sammy Ryderbeit and the grotesque (but hypnotically charming) French secret agent Charles Pol, who would surely have been played by Sydney Greenstreet in an earlier age.
It is odd that only one of Williams’ thrillers, Snake Water, was ever filmed, though far from faithfully.2 The film rights to his 1970 heist novel set in Cambodia and Vietnam, The Tale of the Lazy Dog, were bought by the actor Richard Burton, but the film never materialised.
A stroke and ill-health plagued Williams in later life and his last novel appeared when he was still only 46. He did, however, edit the well-regarded Headline Book of Spy Fiction in 1992.
His thrillers always contained characters who could be utterly ruthless and yet often vulnerable and although there were similar themes and plot devices in all of them, Williams had the knack of mixing topical political concerns with fierce action and suspense. As one observer of the genre noted: ‘Each book takes a slice of history and builds around it, with real and fictional people, a credible story that really could have happened … It is the making of the incredible credible that is Alan Williams’ talent as a spy story-teller.’3
Appendix II
THE SUPPORTING CAST
The explosive take-off of British thrillers was undoubtedly a phenomenon of the Sixties but the trend continued into the Seventies, almost as if getting its ‘second wind’ although that decade was to see the revival of the British detective novel and increased competition from American writers to challenge the UK’s dominance in the adventure thriller and the spy story. The following is a list, unlikely to be comprehensive, of the other British thriller writers involved in the thriller boom between 1953 and 1975 who plied their trade with varying degrees of success, though some were to continue (and are continuing) well beyond that arbitrary cut-off date. It does not recognise those crime writers who may have flirted with the thriller but are better known for their detective or crime novels. The titles cited are UK first editions where known, although several could have been published first in the USA – a not uncommon practice (in the Golden Age of detective stories, novels by Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham often appeared in America months before arriving in bookshops in Britain) – under a different title.
As all of these authors began their writing careers (and in many cases went out of print) in the days before publishers used computerised records, biographical details in some cases are extremely vague. I am particularly indebted to the wonderful website Spy Guys and Gals run by Randall Masteller and grateful to numerous editors and agents now retired, for sharing their memories as well as the many authors who have shared their gossip over the years.
JAMES ALDRIDGE
Born in Australia, Harold Edward James Aldridge (1918–2015) moved to London in 1938 to begin a distinguished career in journalism. During WWII he covered the Axis invasions of Greece and Crete as a war correspondent, which provided the background for his early novels. He was to write some thirty novels for adults and children, plays, non-fiction, and television scripts. His 1962 Cold War adventure thriller The Captive in the Land opens in the Arctic and centres on an English scientist rescuing the sole survivor from a crashed Russian aircraft. His 1966 spy thriller The Statesman’s Game was firmly in the Le Carré tradition.
PATRICK ALEXANDER
A former foreign correspondent and screenwriter, Patrick Alexander (1926–2003) shot to prominence with his debut thriller Death of a Thin-Skinned Animal, which won the Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Award for best first novel in 1976. His second thriller, Show Me A Hero (1979), was set in a Britain of the then near future, ruled by a left-wing tyranny.
TED ALLBEURY
Theodore Edward (Ted) le Bouthillier Allbeury (
1917–2005) was born in Stockport, Cheshire and brought up in Birmingham where he attended King Edward’s Grammar School. He began his working life in an iron foundry, taking an interest in technical draughtsmanship and design. On the outbreak of WWII he attempted to join the RAF but was turned down on the grounds that he had a ‘reserved occupation’. He volunteered for the Army instead under the pretence that he was a labourer, was accepted but then discovered, prosecuted, and fined! In 1940 he answered an advert in the personal columns of The Times asking for ‘linguists’ to help the Army and very quickly found himself in Military Intelligence. He served in security and counter intelligence until 1947, eventually rising to the rank of Lt-Colonel, operating in East and North Africa, Italy, and Germany. After the war he had careers in sales and marketing, advertising and public relations, and even ran a pirate radio station during the 1960s. Following a family crisis and to work through a bout of depression, he began to write a (semi-autobiographical) spy novel. A friend gave the manuscript to an agent who sold it to an American publisher on the strength of only the first four chapters and A Choice of Enemies was published in 1972. The New York Times chose it as one of the ten best thrillers of the year and it launched Allbeury’s prolific career as a thriller writer which was to include more than 40 novels under his own name and the pen-names Patrick Kelly and Richard Butler. He was much admired by fellow writers Len Deighton and Desmond Bagley and his books combined authentic spy ‘tradecraft’ with a groundswell of humanity and often romanticism, particularly in those books where he added a depth of characterisation to the standard wartime thriller, such as The Lantern Network (1978) and Codeword Cromwell (1980).
EVELYN ANTHONY
Pen name of Evelyn Bridgett Patricia Ward-Thomas (née Stephens) who was born in London in 1928, and began writing short stories and historical fiction in 1949. She moved into espionage fiction in 1969 with The Legend and The Assassin in 1970. Her 1971 novel, The Tamarind Seed, was filmed starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif and several of her thrillers had plots referring back to WWII. She created female British Intelligence officer Davina Graham in The Defector in 1980. Her spy thrillers have often been compared to the work of Ted Allbeury, and as a forerunner of the fiction of Stella Rimington, some twenty years later.
WILLIAM ASH
Born in Dallas, William Franklin Ash (1917–2014) was a migrant worker during the Great Depression, graduated from the University of Texas, and at the age of 21 volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. In 1940 he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and by 1941 was flying Spitfires in England. Shot down over northern France in 1942, he evaded capture for more than two months before his arrest in Paris. He subsequently attempted to escape from at least four POW camps and was sentenced to death as a spy by the Gestapo. Said to be the model for the Steve McQueen character Virgil Hilts, ‘the Cooler King’, in the film The Great Escape. Ash always denied this, pointing out that although a prisoner in Stalag Luft III, he did not participate in the mass escape as he was in the Cooler at the time, being punished for a previous escape attempt! In 1946 he was awarded an MBE for his escaping activities, became a British citizen and read PPE at Oxford. He worked for the BBC and produced the definitive guide to writing radio drama, as well as writing several novels and numerous books on politics as his Marxist convictions grew. He wrote two thrillers featuring Kyle Brandeis, editor of a failing literary review and permanently on the run from ex-wives as well as foreign agents: Ride a Paper Tiger (1968) and Take-Off (1969).
W. HOWARD BAKER
The most common of many names used by prolific pulp writer Arthur Athwill William Baker (1925–91). Born in Ireland, he served in the British armed forces and became an editor for Panther paperbacks in London. He wrote extensively for the ‘Sexton Blake Library’, novels based on the television series Danger Man and produced many war stories, horror and science fiction in conjunction with other authors. In the Sixties he produced a series of thrillers starring Richard Quintain of the British Secret Service, set in exotic locations from Vietnam to Tangiers, beginning with Treason by Truth in 1964.
BRIAN BALL
Prolific writer (born Cheshire, 1932) in the science fiction and supernatural genres and of children’s books, Brian Neville Ball also created Terry Keegan, an ex-footballer set up and recruited by British Intelligence in The No-Option Contract in 1976.
KENNETH BENTON
Kenneth Carter Benton (1909–99) was born in Wolverhampton and educated at London University where he excelled in modern languages and went on to teach in Florence and Vienna. In 1937 he joined the British Legation in Vienna as a Passport Control Officer (a traditional cover for MI6 officers abroad), but after the Anschluss with Germany in 1938 – and investigations by the Gestapo – Benton and his newly-married wife (who also worked in the Legation) were transferred to Riga in Latvia until the Soviet invasion in 1940. From 1941 to 1944 he served as head of counter-intelligence in Madrid (at one point under Kim Philby) and further postings were to include Rome, then Peru and Brazil. He retired in 1968 after thirty years in British Intelligence and began writing fiction, his first novel Twenty-Fourth Level, set in Brazil, appeared in 1969 and introduced his series hero Peter Craig, a police and security ‘advisor’ to British diplomatic missions. Six more Craig novels followed including Sole Agent and Spy in Chancery in 1970 and 1972, set respectively in Lisbon and Rome and then Benton returned to South America with Craig and the Jaguar. A final Craig thriller, Vengeance in Venice, was published posthumously by his grandson as an eBook in 2011. Kenneth Benton also wrote as James Kirton and served as Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association 1974–5.
JOHN BINGHAM
John Michael Ward Bingham (1908–88), who became the seventh Baron Clanmorris in 1960, was, according to one biographical summary, a journalist on the Hull Daily Mail and the picture editor of the Sunday Dispatch, but is better known as a long-serving officer of MI5 and one-time boss of ‘John Le Carré’. Following the release of files from the National Archives in 2014, it was suggested that Bingham was the mastermind behind an elaborate double-cross to trap Nazi sympathisers in Britain prior to WWII, though this has never been confirmed officially. He began writing crime fiction in 1952 with the innovative My Name is Michael Sibley and his 1958 novel Murder Plan 6 had his publisher, Victor Gollancz, as one of the main characters. Bingham took great exception to what he saw as John Le Carré’s ‘disloyalty’ to the Intelligence service and the school of ‘spy fantasy’ fiction which he regarded as ‘temperamental wishful thinking’. His best, very realistic, spy story The Double Agent appeared in 1966 but the bulk of his output was of (highly regarded) crime novels and he served as Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association 1971–2.
GAVIN BLACK
Pen-name of Oswald Morris Wynd (1913–98), who was born in Japan, the son of a Scottish Baptist missionary, which gave him dual nationality. He was educated in America and at Edinburgh University and joined the Scots Guards on the outbreak of WWII. His skill with Asian languages earned him a commission in the Intelligence Corps and a posting to Malaya. During the Japanese invasion in 1942, he was separated from his unit and captured. He was to spend more than three years as a prisoner working in coal mines in Japan, where his skill as a translator undoubtedly aided the other prisoners and earned him a Mention in Dispatches after the war. In 1947 he won $20,000 in a first-novel competition organised by American publisher Doubleday and began his writing career. In 1961, in Suddenly, At Singapore, he introduced his series hero Paul Harris who was to appear in over a dozen novels throughout the Sixties and Seventies. Harris, one of the gentlest unofficial spies in fiction, is a Scot (with a passion for malt whisky) and a businessman who runs a small shipping line out of Singapore. His involvement in commerce and industrial espionage often leads into international espionage, occasionally, as in The Golden Cockatrice, arguing in favour of an increased Soviet presence in the Far East to balance the growing influence of Red China and the perceived threat to Hong Kong (and capita
lism). Relatively low on action and tough rather than violent, Black’s novels were crammed with political insight and local colour.
IAN STUART BLACK
After reading philosophy at Manchester University, Ian Stuart Black (1915–97) submitted a one-act play to Donald Wolfit’s theatre company which led to the offer of a job as an actor. During WWII Black served in RAF Intelligence in the Middle East and on demobilisation joined the Rank Organisation at Pinewood Studios as a scriptwriter. In 1954 he worked on the first television detective series for the BBC, Fabian of the Yard, and began to write novels and plays. Possibly his most famous book was The High Bright Sun, set in the Cyprus ‘emergency’, which was filmed starring Dirk Bogarde in 1965, and his most successful period in television was as creative consultant on the popular TV series Danger Man (‘Secret Agent’ in the US) starring Patrick McGoohan. (It was a role he inherited from Ian Fleming who had moved on to developing another project, which eventually became The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) Black also wrote for the television series Adam Adamant and Dr Who and in 1976 he introduced Peter Munro, a porcelain dealer recruited into British Intelligence for a mission in Albania, in the novel The Man on the Bridge.
JOHN BLACKBURN
John Fenwick Blackburn (1923–93) was born in Northumber-land and served in the Merchant Navy as a radio operator during WWII. After the war he graduated from Durham University and became a schoolmaster in London followed by a spell teaching in Berlin, before becoming a second-hand book dealer and then an author, publishing his first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay, in 1958. Blackburn’s thrillers ranged over conventional crime stories and spy thrillers to science fiction and horror, often combining all the elements. Most of his thrillers featured the veteran Intelligence boss General Kirk and prominent scientist Marcus Levin, and many reflected the contemporary fear of biological warfare, (a subject given a masterly Gothic twist and a Cold War setting in A Ring of Roses in 1965 which was possibly Blackburn’s most successful thriller). Sadly neglected is his 1967 historical novel The Flame and the Wind about an investigation – conducted as if George Smiley was in charge – by Roman agents into the background of the recently crucified Jesus Christ. Best-remembered now by horror aficionados (Christopher Lee was said to have been a big fan), John Blackburn was the literary bridge between Dennis Wheatley and James Herbert.