From IX Magazine:
1) Charles Dickens : The grandfather of British fiction Dickens has some of the most memorable titles to his name. ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Bleak House’, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, ‘A Christmas Carol’ to name a few.
2) Roald Dahl: Famous for his amazing and imaginative books for kids, many of which are also adult-friendly, such as ‘Matilda’, ‘The BFG’, ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and, of course ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.
3) J.R.R. Tolkien: Tolkien is the incredible author that brought us ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings trilogy’. These books redefined the fantasy fiction genre and are still held in high esteem today.
4) J. K. Rowling: An author which everyone’s heard of these days, and if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading the gripping ‘Harry Potter’ books you’re definitely missing out. A modern giant.
5) C.S. Lewis: Author of the amazing ‘Chronicles of Narnia’, Lewis’ other titles include ‘The Space Trilogy’, ‘The Great Divorce’, ‘The Problem of Pain’ and ‘The Four Loves’.
6) Sir Terry Pratchett: Famous for the ‘Discworld’ series, which are written in a parody-style of many of the fantasy genre’s great authors, such as J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft.
7) Philip Pullman: Most famous for the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, Pullman also has other works under his belt, such as the ‘Sally Lockhart’ books and his stand alone novels ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’ and ‘I Was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers’
8 ) Ian McEwan: One of Britain’s best-loved authors with titles such as ‘The Child in Time’, ‘Enduring Love’ and ‘Atonement’ to his name.
9) John Le Carré: Famed for his espionage novels with real-world experience of working in MI5 and MI6, adding to his air of mystery. Some of his most popular novels include ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’, ‘The Constant Gardener’ and ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’.
10) George Orwell: The acclaimed author of some of Britain’s best known works, including ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, as well as ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, both of which are based on Orwell’s own life.
Link to the rest at IX Magazine
Where are the women?!? Especially Agatha Christi. Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, Anne Perry, just to name a few.
Click through to the OP and you will see why. This is a filler “list-acle” (an ‘article’ made of an arbitrary list) for some magazine trying to aim itself at the British upper class. Content is unimportant.
Mostly men and only one woman? I could name dozens of great female writers here, past and present.
They don’t quote sales numbers or sources so it’s probably all a load of tosh. I can think of plenty of female authors who may belong on the list, but I don’t really have reliable sales numbers. However, to quote something I found on google “According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie remains the best-selling fiction writer of all time, with total global sales exceeding 2 billion books in more than 100 languages.”
Hell, I’d guess that E L James’ sales could beat many of those men (though I suspect that she doesn’t meet your great female writers criterion).
Huh. I’m surprised Sir Arthur Conan Doyle isn’t on the list.
If you love John le Carré as much as we do you are going to love this non-promotional anecdote about real spies and authors from the espionage genre whether you’re a le Carré connoisseur, a Deighton disciple, a Fleming fanatic, a Herron hireling or a Macintyre marauder. If you don’t love all such things you might learn something so read on! It’s a must read for espionage cognoscenti.
As Kim Philby (codename Stanley) and KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky (codename Sunbeam) would have told you in their heyday, there is one category of secret agent that is often overlooked … namely those who don’t know they have been recruited. For more on that topic we suggest you read Beyond Enkription (explained below) and a recent article on that topic by the ex-spook Bill Fairclough. The article can be found at TheBurlingtonFiles website in the News Section. The article (dated July 21, 2021) is about “Russian Interference”; it’s been read well over 20,000 times.
Now talking of Gordievsky, John le Carré described Ben Macintyre’s fact based novel, The Spy and The Traitor, as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. It was of course about Kim Philby’s Russian counterpart, a KGB Colonel named Oleg Gordievsky, codename Sunbeam. In 1974 Gordievsky became a double agent working for MI6 in Copenhagen which was when Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington unwittingly launched his career as a secret agent for MI6. Fairclough and le Carré knew of each other: le Carré had even rejected Fairclough’s suggestion in 2014 that they collaborate on a book. As le Carré said at the time, “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction in his eighties.
Philby and Gordievsky never met Fairclough, but they did know Fairclough’s handler, Colonel Alan McKenzie aka Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE. It is little wonder therefore that in Beyond Enkription, the first fact based novel in The Burlington Files espionage series, genuine double agents, disinformation and deception weave wondrously within the relentless twists and turns of evolving events. Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 in London, Nassau and Port au Prince. Edward Burlington, a far from boring accountant, unwittingly started working for Alan McKenzie in MI6 and later worked eyes wide open for the CIA.
What happens is so exhilarating and bone chilling it makes one wonder why bother reading espionage fiction when facts are so much more breathtaking. The fact based novel begs the question, were his covert activities in Haiti a prelude to the abortion of a CIA sponsored Haitian equivalent to the Cuban Bay of Pigs? Why was his father Dr Richard Fairclough, ex MI1, involved? Richard was of course a confidant of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who became chief adviser to JFK during the Cuban missile crisis. So how did Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky fit in? You may well ask!
Len Deighton and Mick Herron could be forgiven for thinking they co-wrote the raw noir anti-Bond narrative, Beyond Enkription. Atmospherically it’s reminiscent of Ted Lewis’ Get Carter of Michael Caine fame. If anyone ever makes a film based on Beyond Enkription they’ll only have themselves to blame if it doesn’t go down in history as a classic espionage thriller.
By the way, the maverick Bill Fairclough had quite a lot in common with Greville Wynne (famous for his part in helping to reveal Russian missile deployment in Cuba in 1962) and has also even been called “a posh Harry Palmer”. As already noted, Bill Fairclough and John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) knew of each other but only long after Cornwell’s MI6 career ended thanks to Kim Philby shopping all Cornwell’s supposedly secret agents in Europe. Coincidentally, the novelist Graham Greene used to work in MI6 reporting to Philby and Bill Fairclough actually stayed in Hôtel Oloffson during a covert op in Haiti (explained in Beyond Enkription) which was at the heart of Graham Greene’s spy novel The Comedians. Funny it’s such a small world!