Gavin Lyall
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Gavin Tudor Lyall (May 9, 1932 - January 18, 2003) was a British thriller writer.
Life
Lyall was born in Birmingham, England. From 1951 to 1953 he was a Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force. After completing his two years of military service, he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1956 with a degree in English. He worked briefly as a reporter for the Picture Post and Sunday Graphic newspapers and then as a producer for the BBC's Tonight programme. In 1958 he married the author Katharine Whitehorn, with whom he was to have two children. From 1959 to 1962 he was a reporter and the air correspondent for the Sunday Times. After the publication in 1961 of his first novel, The Wrong Side of the Sky, he left journalism to become a full-time author.
Lyall's first seven novels in the 1960s and early 1970s were action thrillers with different settings around the world. He won Crime Writers' Association's awards in both 1964 and 1965. In 1966-67 he was Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association. In the 1980s he wrote four espionage thrillers about Harry Maxim, a former SAS officer and security adviser at 10 Downing Street. In the 1990s he wrote four thrillers about the British secret service in the years leading up to World War I.
List of books
Fiction
- The Wrong Side of the Sky (1961)
- The Most Dangerous Game (1963)
- Midnight Plus One (1965)
- Shooting Script (1966)
- Venus with Pistol (1969)
- Blame the Dead (1973)
- Judas Country (1975)
- The Secret Servant (1980)
- The Conduct of Major Maxim (1982)
- The Crocus List (1985)
- Uncle Target (1988)
- Spy's Honour (1993)
- Flight from Honour (1996)
- All Honourable Men (1997)
- Honourable Intentions (1999)
Non fiction
- Freedom's Battle: The War in the Air 1939-1945 (1971)
- Operation Warboard: How to Fight World War II Battles in Miniature - Wargaming WW II Battles in 20-25mm Scale (1972) (with Bernard Lyall)
Obituaries
The Guardian [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,878937,00.html)
The Times [2] (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-45-549709,00.html)
Daily Telegraph [3] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&targetRule=10&xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F01%2F21%2Fdb2101.xml)