Ted Allbeury

Ted Allbeury, born in Stockport, Cheshire, is recognized as one of England's top espionage thriller writers of the twentieth century. He served in British intelligence as a Special Operations Executive during World War II, a role that included parachuting into Germany and living behind enemy lines until the allies landed. Allbeury's life was marked by significant events even before his intelligence career. After his father's death just before the 1918 Armistice of World War I, his mother moved the family to Birmingham where he attended King Edward's Grammar school. He became a draftsman and designer in an iron foundry, teaching himself German and French during this time.

Allbeury's military career began when he tried to join the RAF but was rejected and prosecuted for attempting to leave a reserved occupation. Undeterred, he applied for a linguist job with the army, which he saw advertised in a newspaper. Following World War II, Allbeury became a lieutenant-colonel in the Intelligence Corps and later a successful executive in marketing, advertising, and radio. He started his writing career in the early 1970s and gained recognition for his espionage novels, publishing one highly-praised general novel, 'The Choice,' and a short story collection, 'Other Kinds of Treason.' Allbeury's novels have been translated into twenty-three languages, including Russian.

Allbeury's firsthand experiences during the Cold War enrich his espionage novels, earning him praise from the New York Times Book Review as a "most knowledgeable chronicler of espionage" and from Booklist as "a master of the genre." His work has been compared to that of John le Carré, Brad Thor, and Frederick Forsyth. The movie 'Blue Ice' with Michael Caine was based on his characters, and his book 'No Place to Hide' was adapted as 'Hostage' starring Sam Neill. BBC Radio 4 has adapted several of his novels for radio broadcast. Allbeury wrote over 40 books, many under the pen names of Patrick Kelly and Richard Butler, including 'A Choice of Enemies,' 'Snowball,' 'The Judas Factor,' 'The Seeds of Treason,' and 'Shadow of a Doubt.' Despite being written decades ago, his bestselling book 'The Twentieth Day of January' has recently received significant media attention due to its exploration of controversies surrounding the 2016 election.