Nicholas Blake

novelist, and creator of the detective Nigel Strangeways

Introduction

Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of C. Day Lewis. Born in Ballintogher, Ireland, in 1904 Cecil Day Lewis was educated at Sherbone and Wadham College, Oxford. Here he became friends with fellow undergraduate, W.H. Auden, who is said to have been a model for the amateur sleuth Nigel Strangeways. This character appears in all but four of the twenty novels written by "Nicholas Blake" and published between 1935 and 1968.

In addition to W.H. Auden, C. Day-Lewis is often linked with other well-known poets of the 1930's who shared common socialist and anti-fascist views such as Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice. His poetry was critically acclaimed for its lyricism and in 1968, C. Day Lewis was appointed Poet Laureate in succession to John Masefield. He held this post for four years until his death in 1972.

He had two sons by his first marriage, one being Sean Day-Lewis who wrote a biography of his father which was published in 1980. In 1951 he married for the second time, this time to the actress Jill Balcon. His two children by this marriage are the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the journalist Tamasin Day-Lewis.

C. Day Lewis was buried in Stinsford churchyard, Dorset, near to the grave of Thomas Hardy, for who he had always the greatest respect and admiration.

Bibliography

The Nigel Stangeways series:-

A question of proof (1935)
Thou shell of death (1936)
There's trouble brewing (1937)
The beast must die (1938)
The smiler with the knife (1939)
Malice in wonderland (1940)
The case of the abominable snowman (1941)
Minute for murder (1947)
Head of a traveller (1949)
The dreadful hollow (1953)
The whisper in the gloom (1954)
End of chapter (1957)
The widow's cruise (1959)
The worm of death (1961)
The sad variety (1964)
The morning after death (1966)

Other novels:-

A tangled web (1956)
A penknife in my heart (1958)
The deadly joker (1963)
The private wound (1968)

Page created 19 February 2002 and last updated 19 April 2008