Biography

George Anthony Armstrong Willis (1897–1976), known as Anthony Armstrong, was an Anglo-Canadian writer, dramatist and essayist. A humorist who contributed to Punch and The New Yorker magazines, he wrote well-plotted crime plays including Ten Minute Alibi (1933). Anthony Armstrong was the son of George Hughlings Armstrong Willis and Adela Emma Temple Frere. Although his parents were both English, he was born in Esquimalt, British Columbia as a consequence of his father's career as a Paymaster Captain in the Royal Navy. They returned to England before his brother's birth in 1900 in Dorset. He was educated at Uppingham School. His brother John Christopher Temple Willis (1900–1969) was Director-General of the Ordnance Survey 1953–1957, and a watercolourist.

During the First World War Willis was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1915. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1916.He married Frances Monica Sealy, and had three children: John Humfrey Armstrong Willis (1928–2012), Antonia Armstrong Willis (1932-2017), and Felicity Armstrong Willis (1936-2006). Antonia married the art expert and gallery owner Jeremy Maas; one of their sons, Rupert, is also an art expert, notable for his appearances on the Antiques Roadshow. Jonathan, another of their sons, is the current intellectual property rights holder for Anthony Armstrong's works and can be reached via his London agents, Eric Glass Ltd.

Armstrong contributed to the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937). Several of his own works were adapted into films including The Strange Case of Mr Pelham, which was made into a first-season episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (and directed by Hitchcock), and the film The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970).