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Gavin Tudor Lyall (9 May 1932 – 18 January 2003) was an English author of
espionage thriller
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligenc ...
s.
Biography
Lyall was born in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
, then in
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Av ...
(now
West Midlands
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
), England, as the son of a local accountant, and educated at
King Edward's School, Birmingham
King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Bir ...
. After completing his two years of
National Service
National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939.
The ...
, 1951 to 1953, as a
Pilot Officer in the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
flying
Gloster Meteor
The Gloster Meteor was the first British jet fighter and the Allies of World War II, Allies' only jet aircraft to engage in combat operations during the Second World War. The Meteor's development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turb ...
s, he went to
Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1956 with honours in English.
While at Cambridge he wrote regularly for the undergraduate newspaper
Varsity and also created a strip cartoon whose hero, "Olly", reflected student life and became a cult figure. He became editor of Varsity in 1956.
After graduating he worked briefly as a reporter for the ''
Birmingham Gazette
The ''Birmingham Gazette'', known for much of its existence as ''Aris's Birmingham Gazette'', was a newspaper that was published and circulated in Birmingham, England, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Founded as a weekly publicati ...
'', ''
Picture Post
''Picture Post'' was a photojournalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months. ...
'' and ''
Sunday Graphic'' newspapers and then as a
film director for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
's ''
Tonight
Tonight may refer to:
Television
* ''Tonight'' (1957 TV programme), a 1957–1965 British current events television programme hosted by Cliff Michelmore that was broadcast on BBC
* ''Tonight'' (1975 TV programme), a 1975–1979 British current ...
'' programme. In 1958, he married the author
Katharine Whitehorn, with whom he was to have two sons.
Lyall lived at 14 Provost Rd,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
NW3 and enjoyed sailing on the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
in his motor cruiser. From 1959 to 1962 he was a
newspaper reporter
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
and the aviation correspondent for the ''
Sunday Times''. His first
novel, ''The Wrong Side of the Sky'', was published in 1961, drawing from his personal experiences in the
Libyan Desert
The Libyan Desert (not to be confused with the Libyan Sahara) is a geographical region filling the north-eastern Sahara Desert, from eastern Libya to the Western Desert of Egypt and far northwestern Sudan. On medieval maps, its use predates t ...
and in
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...
. It was an immediate success;
P.G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jee ...
said of it, "Terrific: when better novels of suspense are written, lead me to them."
[Guardian obituary, ''infra''.] Lyall then left
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...
in 1963 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. ''The Most Dangerous Game'' (1963) was set in Finnish
Lapland. The film rights to ''Midnight Plus One'' (1965), in which an ex-spy is hired to drive a millionaire to
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarch ...
were purchased by actor
Steve McQueen, who had planned to adapt it to the
cinema
Cinema may refer to:
Film
* Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography
* Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image
** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking
...
before he died. ''Shooting Script'' (1966), about a former
RAF
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
pilot hired to fly his
de Havilland Dove
The de Havilland DH.104 Dove is a British short-haul airliner developed and manufactured by de Havilland. The design, which was a monoplane successor to the pre-war Dragon Rapide biplane, came about from the Brabazon Committee report which, ...
for a filming company, later in the story a
B-25 Mitchell, is set around the
Caribbean. Whitmore, a central character in the story was inspired by
John Wayne who Lyall had met while reporting on the making of the 1957 film 'Legend of the Lost' in Libya. The protagonists of ''Judas Country'' (1975) are again former RAF pilots, and the setting is now in
Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...
and the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
.
Lyall is credited as co-writer (together with Frank Hardman and Martin Davison) of the original story on which the screenplay of the 1969 science-fiction film ''
Moon Zero Two
''Moon Zero Two'' is a 1969 British science fiction film from Hammer Films, directed by Roy Ward Baker, and starring James Olson, Catherine Schell, Warren Mitchell, and Adrienne Corri.
The film takes place on the Moon in the year 2021. A for ...
'' is based.
Gavin Lyall was also a wargamer and appeared in "Battleground", a Tyne Tees television series on miniature war gaming in 197
Lyall won the British
Crime Writers' Association's
Silver Dagger award in both 1964 and 1965. In 1966-67 he was Chairman of the British Crime Writers Association. He was not a prolific author, attributing his slow pace to obsession with technical accuracy. According to a British newspaper, "he spent many nights in his kitchen at Primrose Hill, north London, experimenting to see if one could, in fact, cast bullets from lead melted in a saucepan, or whether the muzzle flash of a revolver fired across a saucer of petrol really would ignite a fire".
He eventually published the results of his research in a series of pamphlets for the Crime Writers' Association in the 1970s.
Lyall signed a contract in 1964 by the investments group Booker similar to one they had signed with
Ian Fleming. In return for a lump payment of £25,000 and an annual salary, they and Lyall subsequently split his royalties, 51–49.
Up to the publication in 1975 of ''Judas Country'', Lyall's work falls into two groups. The aviation thrillers (''The Wrong Side of the Sky'', ''The Most Dangerous Game'', ''Shooting Script'', and ''Judas Country''), and what might be called "Euro-thrillers" revolving around international crime in Europe (''Midnight Plus One'', ''Venus With Pistol'', and ''Blame The Dead''). All these books were written in the
first person, with a sardonic style reminiscent of the "hard-boiled private-eye" genre. Despite the commercial success of his work, Lyall began to feel that he was falling into a predictable pattern, and abandoned both his earlier genres, and the first-person narrative, for his "Harry Maxim" series of
espionage thrillers beginning with ''The Secret Servant'' published in 1980. This book, originally developed for a proposed
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...