Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who was born in County Laois, Ireland, in 1904. After his mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his clergyman father, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927. Blake initially worked as a teacher to supplement his income from his poetry writing and he published his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, in 1935. Blake went on to write a further nineteen crime novels, all but four of which featured Nigel Strangeways, as well as numerous poetry collections and translations.
During the Second World War he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information, which he used as the basis for the Ministry of Morale in Minute for Murder, and after the war he joined the publishers Chatto & Windus as an editor and director. He was married twice, in 1928 to Constance M King, the daughter of a master at Sherborne, and in 1951 to the actress Jill Balcon. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968 and died in 1972 at the home of his friend, the writer Kingsley Amis.
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Subjects
Fiction, mystery & detective, general, Fiction, crime, Fiction, Nigel Strangeways (Fictitious character), Alumni and alumnae, Intellectuals, University of Oxford, Fiction, general, Great Britain, Great Britain. Royal Navy, History, Large type books, Anonymous letters, British Naval operations, Detective and mystery stories, English literature, Fiction in English, Fiction, mystery & detective, collections & anthologies, France, Great britain, royal navy, history, In literature, Mystery and detective stories, Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815, Nelson, horatio nelson, viscount, 1758-1805, Nigel Strangeways (fictitious character)Places
EnglandID Numbers
- OLID: OL2471327A
- Wikidata: Q954383
- Inventaire.io: wd:Q954383
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Alternative names
- Cecil Day-Lewis
- C. Day-Lewis
July 22, 2022 | Edited by Martha Carson Wade | Edited without comment. |
July 22, 2022 | Edited by Martha Carson Wade | Edited without comment. |
June 25, 2022 | Edited by Martha Carson Wade | Edited without comment. |
March 17, 2022 | Edited by Martha Carson Wade | Added biography from Vintage Books |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | initial import |