1. Derek William Mario Marlowe was an English playwright, novelist, screenwriter and painter.
19 Facts About Derek Marlowe
1. 2.
Derek Marlowe was born in Perivale, Middlesex, and lived there and in Greenford as a child.
3.
Derek Marlowe's father was Frederick William Marlowe and his mother Helene Alexandroupolos.
4.
Derek Marlowe had early education at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Holland Park.
5.
In 1959 Marlowe went to Queen Mary College of the University of London to study English literature.
6.
Derek Marlowe calls his time spent there the unhappiest years of his life.
7.
At college, Derek Marlowe was a contemporary of the poet Lee Harwood, and after leaving he shared a flat with fellow writers Tom Stoppard and Piers Paul Read.
8.
Derek Marlowe married Susan Rose "Suki" Phipps, daughter of Veronica Nell Fraser-Phipps and stepdaughter of Sir Fitzroy Maclean, in 1968; together they had a son, Ben, to add to Suki's two sons and two daughters from a previous marriage.
9.
Derek Marlowe divorced in 1985 and in 1989 he moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote a number of scripts for television, including the award-winning Two Mrs Grenvilles, Abduction of Innocence and an episode of Murder, She Wrote.
10.
Derek Marlowe was cremated in California, but his ashes were brought back to England by his sister, Alda.
11.
In 1962 Derek Marlowe adapted Maxim Gorki's book The Lower Depths for the London stage.
12.
Derek Marlowe wrote nine novels and a fragment of a tenth.
13.
Derek Marlowe published his first novel A Dandy in Aspic in 1966.
14.
Derek Marlowe wrote the books in four weeks while working as a clerk at National Benzole and struggling with a play that he'd been attempting to write.
15.
Nicholas Royle cites the novel as the fifth greatest debut novel ever written, though adding that Derek Marlowe would go on to write "even better novels".
16.
Derek Marlowe returned to the world of espionage in his 1970 novel Echoes of Celandine which was filmed as The Disappearance starring Donald Sutherland.
17.
Derek Marlowe felt Harvey was miscast and did a terrible job finishing the film after director Mann died during production.
18.
Derek Marlowe wrote four episodes of the BBC television series The Search for the Nile in 1971, which subsequently won him an Emmy and a Writers' Guild of Great Britain "Best British Documentary Script" award.
19.
Derek Marlowe's last work was a feature-length episode of Murder, She Wrote produced posthumously in 1997.