Following an education at the Perse School, and Regent Street
Polytechnic, Margery Allingham wrote her early books (Crime At Black
Dudley, Look To The Lady) in the infrequent spare time from her film
work. These first novels appeared towards the end of the roaring
twenties, and were read by a small but loyal audience. These people
enjoyed her lively and amusing forays into the problems and pleasures
of post-war youth, and in the decades to follow her readership grew
and grew.
In an Observer review of The Fashion In Shrouds Torquemada remarked that 'to Albert Campion has fallen the honour of being the first detective to feature in a story which is also by any standard a distinguished novel'. Her novels cover a broad field, varying in theme from the frankly satirical to the most serious of all topics. However, each and every example contrives to conform to the basic rules of the good detective tale.
She was with her husband and partner, Philip Youngman Carter, for almost forty years, living for much of that time on the edge of the Essex Marshes. Together they had concieved many of the plots that appeared in her writing, and after her death in June 1966 it was he who completed her final work Cargo Of Eagles.