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...
Literary figures
Pharoah Love
Gender: Male
He must be one of the most unlikely police officers in crime literature: an Afro-American and openly homosexual hipster in New York who drives a Jaguar, uses a trendy slang and has a preference for young, sexy, white men. George Baxt wrote five novels about Pharoah (spelt like that!) Love, who is a handsome, ready-witted and jazz-loving ‘cool cat’ of early middle-age and who became a favourite wit...