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Portrait image of Daphne Du Maurier Photo: TV Times / Getty Images (c.1977)

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Du Maurier, Daphne

The British novelist and playwright Daphne du Maurier was born in London to parents who were both prominent actors; her grandfather was an author and caricaturist for Punch. Daphne du Maurier attended public schools in London and Paris and began to write at an early age, her first novel The Loving Spirit came in 1931. The following year she married Frederick "Boy" Browning, later promoted to...

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Literary figures

Boysie (Brian) Oakes

Gender: Male

He is recruited as a spy by mistake, and is regarded as tough, ruthless and bloodthirsty. In actual fact, he is an easy-going, forgetful and cowardly mummy’s boy, who hires gangsters to carry out the acts of violence he is ordered to do. This doesn’t prevent Brian ‘Boysie’ Oakes from making a career. It is simplest to describe him as a parody of James Bond, and John Gardner has written a suite of...

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