William Le Queux

William Tufnell Le Queux was born in London on 2 July 1864. Growing up he dabbled in art (moving around in France and Germany) and supported himself by writing for the magazines. It was one of his sensational stories in The Petit Journal that attracted the attention of the French novelist Emile Zola and it was Zola who encouraged Le Queux to become a full-time writer.

In the late 1880s, he returned to London where he edited the magazines Gossip and Piccadilly before joining the staff of the newspaper The Globe in 1891. But he decided to abandon journalism to focus on writing and travelling. And his extensive travelling saw him visit Russia, the Near East, North Africa, Egypt and the Sudan and in 191213 he was a correspondent in the Balkan War for the Daily Mail.

His first book was Guilty Bonds (1891), which concentrated on political conspiracy in Russia to such a degree that it was subsequently banned in that country.

He was apparently working for British intelligence and even claimed that he began writing to help finance his work for British Intelligence for whom he was required to undertake much travelling and meet high ranking people. He recorded some of this in his autobiography entitled Things I Know about Kings, Celebrities and Crooks. He also wrote The Czar's Spy: The Mystery of a Silent Love (1905), The Four Faces: A Mystery (1914), The Minister of Evil (1918), The Doctor of Pimlico (1919), Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo (1921), and The Secret of the Fox Hunter.

He died at Knocke, Belgium, in 1927 after several weeks' illness.