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
Gervase Fen
Gender: Male
Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, as well as an amateur detective in a number of humorous crime stories by Edmund Crispin (pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery). Gervase Fen is a middle-aged, jolly family father with wavy hair who enthusiastically deals with the criminal mysteries he happens to get involved in. By his side he often has the sensible Chief...