Anthony Berkeley Cox

Anthony Berkeley Cox was born 5 July 1893 at Watford, son of medical practitioner Dr Alfred Edward Cox (1861–1936), of Monmouth House and The Platts, two adjoining properties on Watford High Street, and Sybil Maud (died 1924), née Iles, who ran a school at Monmouth House. His paternal grandfather was a Derby wine merchant. Cox had two younger siblings: Stephen Henry Johnson Cox (1899–1960), who became a schoolmaster, and Cynthia Cicely Cox (born 1897).

With his brother, Cox was educated at Rose Hill School, Banstead, Surrey, and from the age of 14 was educated at Sherborne School[1] and then University College, Oxford.

As an ex-cadet of the Officer Training Corps, Cox was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the British Army on 19 September 1914.[2] He was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 4 November 1915.[3] He served in 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment during the First World War. He suffered from a gas attack in France, which caused long-term damage to his health.[4][5] Following the attack, he was invalided back to England and then worked a number of desk jobs for the Army.[5] On 15 April 1919, he was transferred to the unemployed list, therefore ending his military service.[6]

Following the war, he worked as a journalist for many years, contributing to such magazines as Punch[4] and The Humorist.

His first novel, The Layton Court Mystery, was published anonymously in 1925. It introduced Roger Sheringham, the amateur detective who features in many of the author's novels including the classic Poisoned Chocolates Case. In 1930, Berkeley founded the Detection Club in London along with Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts and other established mystery writers.

His 1932 novel (as "Francis Iles"), Before the Fact was adapted into the 1941 classic film Suspicion, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. Trial and Error was turned into the unusual 1941 film Flight from Destiny starring Thomas Mitchell.

He was a friend of EM Delafield and they each dedicated a book to the other (Jill and The Wychford Poisoning Case). She gently ragged him in her Provincial Lady Goes Further by having people tell her that "Francis Iles" is really Aldous Huxley or Edith Sitwell. The opening sentence of Malice Aforethought has been described as "immortal":[7] "It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Doctor Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter."

In 1938, he took up book reviewing for John O'London's Weekly and The Daily Telegraph, writing under his pen name Francis Iles. He also wrote for the Sunday Times in the 1940s and for the Manchester Guardian, later The Guardian, from the mid-1950s until 1970. A key figure in the development of crime fiction, he died in 1971 in St John's Wood, London. His estate was valued at £196,917 (£2,321,878 in 2023).[8]