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
Marcus Didius Falco
Gender: Male
Former Roman soldier who, after having fought in Britannia, settles in Rome as a ‘private informer’ at the end of the 1st century A.D. He marries Helena Justina, a senator’s daughter, and they build a family. In Lindsey Davis’ last (?) novel about him, he seems to die, but there is some uncertainty about that. His role as a problem-solver is then taken over by his adoptive daughter Flavia Albia.