Jack Trevor Story

Jack Story was the son of a baker's roundsman and a domestic servant. During the First World War his father was killed and then his mother moved to Cambridge and worked in one of the colleges. As a youngster he worked as a butcher's lad making local deliveries. He stated that his early education was derived from 'The Modern Boy', 'Melody Maker' and Action publications.Self-taught, he began his writing in the early 1940s and it was said that he regularly wrote 4,000 words a day and often took only two or three weeks to finish a novel. He was married three times and had eight children and also gained a reputation as a ladies' man and apparently he was often seen with glamorous women. As a consequence his domestic life was said to be chaotic, owing to his serial infidelity and his bankruptcy, both of which occasionally provided inspiration for some of his work. He first achieved success as a writer with the Pinetop Jones Western stories (writing under the pseudonym Bret Harding) and he later achieved great fame contributing to the Sexton Blake detective series. He was also well known for his Horace Spurgeon novels and the Albert Argyle trilogy. He also used the pseudonyms Alex Atwell and Rex Riotti.When he was penniless in the 1970s he moved to the then new town of Milton Keynes, where he was given a flat about the Museum of Rural Life. He meant to stay only one year, but remained there for the rest of his life.He wrote a weekly column for 'The Guardian' in the 1970s and appeared on television in the series 'Jack on the Box' in 1979. He wrote several screenplays, including the film 'Mix Me a Person', and was heavily involved in the film version of his novel 'Live Now - Pay Later'. His final broadcast was an audio diary entitled 'Jack's Last Tape'. His novel 'The Trouble with Harry' (1949) was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1955.When someone once asked him why he didn't write an autobiography. He replied [referring to his novels and other writings], 'What do you think I've been doing all these years?' He died in 1991.