Desmond Bagley

Desmond Bagley (29 October 1923 – 12 April 1983) was an English journalist and novelist known mainly for a series of bestselling thrillers. He and fellow British writers such as Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean set conventions for the genre: a tough, resourceful, but essentially ordinary hero pitted against villains determined to sow destruction and chaos for their own ends. Bagley was born in Kendal, Westmorland – now in Cumbria – as the son of John and Hannah Bagley. His family moved to the resort town of Blackpool in the summer of 1935, when Bagley was 12. Leaving school not long after the move, Bagley worked as a printer's assistant and factory worker, and during the Second World War in the aircraft industry. Bagley had a stutter all of his life, which initially exempted him from military conscription.Bagley left England in 1947 for Africa and worked his way overland, crossing the Sahara Desert and briefly settling in Kampala, Uganda, where he contracted malaria. By 1951, he had settled in South Africa, working in the gold mining and asbestos industries in Durban, Natal, before becoming a freelance writer for local newspapers and magazines. While there he met a local bookstore director, Joan Margaret Brown, whom he married in 1960.

In an afterword to his novel Windfall, Bagley describes how as a freelancer for the Johannesburg Sunday Times, he witnessed the 1960 assassination attempt against South African PM Hendrik Verwoerd.

When not travelling to research the exotic backgrounds for his novels, Bagley enjoyed sailing, loved classical music, films and military history, and played war games.

Bagley and his wife left South Africa for England in 1964, where they lived in Bishopsteignton, Devon. They settled in Totnes, Devon, from 1966 to 1976, and then moved to Guernsey until his death in 1983. Thereafter his wife continued to live there until her death in 1999.

Bagley died on 12 April 1983 at a hospital in Southampton of complications resulting from a stroke. He was 59.