Gavin Lyall

Gavin Lyall
Born	Gavin Tudor Lyall (1932-05-09)9 May 1932 Birmingham,Warwickshire,England
Died	18 January 2003(2003-01-18)(aged 70) London
Occupation	journalist and novelist
Genre	Thriller
Spouse	Katharine Whitehorn ​ (m.1958)​

Gavin Tudor Lyall(9 May 1932 – 18 January 2003) was an English author ofespionage thrillers.

Biography

Lyall was born inBirmingham,then inWarwickshire(nowWest Midlands), England, as the son of a local accountant, and educated atKing Edward's School, Birmingham.After completing his two years ofNational Service,1951 to 1953, as aPilot Officerin theRoyal Air ForceflyingGloster Meteors,he went toPembroke College, Cambridge,graduating in 1956 with honours in English.

While at Cambridge he wrote regularly for the undergraduate newspaperVarsityand 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 theBirmingham Gazette,Picture PostandSunday Graphicnewspapers and then as afilm directorfor theBBC'sTonightprogramme. In 1958, he married the authorKatharine Whitehorn,with whom he was to have two sons.

Lyall lived at 14 Provost Rd,LondonNW3 and enjoyed sailing on theThamesin his motor cruiser. From 1959 to 1962 he was anewspaper reporterand the aviation correspondent for theSunday Times.His firstnovel,The Wrong Side of the Sky,was published in 1961, drawing from his personal experiences in theLibyan Desertand inGreece.It was an immediate success;P.G. Wodehousesaid of it, "Terrific: when better novels of suspense are written, lead me to them."Lyall then leftjournalismin 1963 to become a full-time author.

Lyall's first seven novels in the 1960s and early 1970s wereaction thrillerswith different settings around the world.The Most Dangerous Game(1963) was set in FinnishLapland.The film rights toMidnight Plus One(1965), in which an ex-spy is hired to drive a millionaire toLiechtensteinwere purchased by actorSteve McQueen,who had planned to adapt it to thecinemabefore he died.Shooting Script(1966), about a formerRAFpilot hired to fly hisde Havilland Dovefor a filming company, later in the story aB-25 Mitchell,is set around theCaribbean.Whitmore, a central character in the story was inspired byJohn Waynewho Lyall had met while reporting on the making of the 1957 film 'Legend of the Lost' in Libya. The protagonists ofJudas Country(1975) are again former RAF pilots, and the setting is now inCyprusand theMiddle East.

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 filmMoon Zero Twois based.

Gavin Lyall was also a wargamer and appeared in "Battleground", a Tyne Tees television series on miniature war gaming in 1978.[1]

Lyall won the BritishCrime Writers' Association'sSilver Dagger awardin 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 withIan 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 ofJudas Country,Lyall's work falls into two groups. The aviation thrillers (The Wrong Side of the Sky,The Most Dangerous Game,Shooting Script,andJudas Country), and what might be called "Euro-thrillers" revolving around international crime in Europe (Midnight Plus One,Venus With Pistol,andBlame The Dead). All these books were written in thefirst 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 ofespionage thrillersbeginning withThe Secret Servantpublished in 1980. This book, originally developed for a proposedBBCTV Series,featured Major Harry Maxim, anSASofficer assigned as a security adviser to10 Downing Street,and was followed by threesequelswith the same central cast of characters. In the 1990s Lyall changed literary direction once again, and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the fledglingBritish secret servicein the years leading up toWorld War I.

Lyall died ofcancerin 2003.

Works

• The Wrong Side of the Sky(1961)
• The Most Dangerous Game(1963)
• Midnight Plus One(1965)
• Shooting Script(1966)
• Venus With Pistol(1969)
• Freedom's Battle: The War in the Air 1939-1945(1971)
• Blame the Dead(1973)
• Judas Country(1975)
• Operation Warboard: How to Fight World War II Battles in Miniature(1976) non-fiction, in collaboration with his son Bernard Lyall
• 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)

Obituaries

• The Guardian
• The Times
• New York Times

References

• Murphy, Bruce F. (1999).Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery.Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN0-312-29414-X.
• Pederson, Jay P.; Klein, Kathleen Gregory (1996).St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers.St James Press.ISBN1-55862-178-4.
• DeAndrea, William L (1997).Encyclopedia Mysteriosa.Hungry Minds.ISBN0-02-861678-2.
• Petri Liukkonen."Gavin Lyall".Books and Writers.
• Whitehorn, Katharine (2007).Selective Memory.Little Brown.ISBN978-1-84408-240-7.