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Francis Clifford biographical details
Francis Clifford was the pen-name of Arthur Leonard Bell Thompson (1917-1975), who was born in Bristol but pursued a career in the rice trade in China before joining the army, aged 22, on the outbreak of WWII. In 1942, as a Captain in the Burma Rifles commanding a company of native Karen troops, he distinguished himself in the British retreat from Burma after the Japanese invasion, leading sixty ill-equipped survivors to safety after a 900-mile march through enemy-occupied jungle and mountains. He wrote the story of that escape in the book Desperate Journey, but his heroic and modest account was only published thirty years after the war and the author’s death. He became one of the most respected British writers of atmospheric and suspenseful thrillers, was twice shortlisted for an Edgar Award in the USA and won two Silver Daggers from the Crime Writers Association, one of them for The Grosvenor Square Goodbye. |
