Margery Allingham
1904 – 1966
Margery Allingham’s contribution to the world of fiction began while she was still in her teens, and at the age of twenty-three, in 1928, she created a detective with a distinctive approach to the problems and pleasures of post-war youth. This affable, bewildering young character was Albert Campion, and his adventures were to span the following four decades.
Following an education at the Perse School, and Regent Street Polytechnic, Margery Allingham wrote her early books (Crime At Black Dudley, Look To The Lady) in the infrequent spare time from her film work. These first novels appeared towards the end of the roaring twenties, and were read by a small but loyal audience. These people enjoyed her lively and amusing forays into the problems and pleasures of post-war youth, and in the decades to follow her readership grew and grew.
In an Observer review of The Fashion In Shrouds Torquemada remarked that ‘to Albert Campion has fallen the honour of being the first detective to feature in a story which is also by any standard a distinguished novel’. Her novels cover a broad field, varying in theme from the frankly satirical to the most serious of all topics. However, each and every example contrives to conform to the basic rules of the good detective tale.
She was with her husband and partner, Philip Youngman Carter, for almost forty years, living for much of that time on the edge of the Essex Marshes. Tog
