14 Facts About Eric Ambler

Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an English author of thrillers, in particular spy novels, who introduced a new realism to the genre.

Also working as a screenwriter, Ambler used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books written with Charles Rodda.

Eric Ambler was born in Charlton, South-East London, into a family of entertainers who ran a puppet show, with which he helped in his early years.

Eric Ambler later studied engineering at the Northampton Polytechnic Institute in Islington and served a traineeship with an engineering company.

Eric Ambler was then politically a staunch antifascist and, like many others, tended to regard the Soviet Union as the only real counterweight to fascist aggression, which was reflected in the fact that some of his early books included Soviet agents depicted positively and as sympathetic characters, the undoubted allies of the protagonist.

Eric Ambler was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1941.

Eric Ambler ended the war as a lieutenant-colonel and an assistant director of the Army Film and Photographic Unit.

Eric Ambler did not resume writing under his own name until 1951, when he entered the second of his two distinct periods in his writing.

Eric Ambler was elected to the Detection Club in 1952, the first member to primarily write thrillers rather than traditional Golden Age detective novels.

Eric Ambler created the 1960 American detective TV series Checkmate.

Eric Ambler divorced Crombie in May 1958 and married the same year British-born Joan Harrison, a film producer, screenwriter and associate of Alfred and Alma Hitchcock.

Eric Ambler was a successful screenwriter and lived in Los Angeles in his later years.

Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay for A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic, along with many other screenplays, particularly those concerning stories and adventures at sea.

In contrast to most other spy novels published before his, the protagonists in Eric Ambler's novels are rarely professional spies, policemen or counterintelligence operatives.