Author Lawrence Meynell's desk chair, the green leather swivel desk chair above four arched legs

Author Lawrence Meynell's desk chair, the green leather swivel desk chair above four arched legs

Laurence Walter Meynell (1899-1989) aka Valerie Baxter, Sidney Bedford, Robert Eton, Geoffrey Ludlow

Born in 1899, in Wolverhampton, Laurence Walter Meynell was the son of Herbert Meynell, chairman of Meynell and Sons Ltd., and his wife Agnes. He was educated at St. Edmund's College in Ware, Hertfordshire, and served in the artillery in The First World War. He worked for an estate agency, and as a teacher, before his first novel, Mockbeggar, won a competition run by the publishers Harrap in 1924, and he turned to writing as a career. Meynell also worked as an editor, beginning in the 1950s, for the Bodley Head, and for Time and Tide. He was married twice, to novelist Shirley Darbyshire and to Joan Belfrage, and had one daughter. He died in 1989.

Meynell is primarily remembered for his crime fiction, much of it published under his own name, but he also published children's fiction under the pseudonyms A. Stephen Tring and Valerie Baxter. He also used the pseudonyms Robert Eton and Geoffrey Ludlow.

Provenance: By Family Descent