Nicholas Blake

Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of the British Poet Laureate C. Day Lewis, who was born as Cecil Day-Lewis in Ireland in 1904. After his mother's death in 1906, he was raised in London by his father and an aunt. Blake was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he encountered W. H. Auden’s circle and began his successful poetry career. He started his career as a schoolmaster and during World War II, he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information.

Blake was married twice, first to Mary King in 1928 and then to Jill Balcon in 1951, after having a long love affair with novelist Rosamond Lehmann during the 1940s. He had four children from his two marriages, including the actor Daniel Day-Lewis, documentary filmmaker and television chef Tamasin Day-Lewis, and TV critic and writer Sean Day-Lewis. Blake is best known for his Nigel Strangeways series, which he began in 1935 with 'A Question of Proof'. He wrote a total of 16 novels in the series, ending with 'The Morning After Death' in 1966. In addition to the Strangeways series, he wrote four detective novels that did not feature Strangeways.

Blake continued to write poetry throughout his life and was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968, a position he held until his death in 1972. He was also awarded the CBE. He died from pancreatic cancer at the Hertfordshire home of Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard, where he and his wife were staying. Blake had arranged to be buried in Stinsford churchyard, close to the grave of one of his heroes, Thomas Hardy, before his death.