[Gutenberg 29173] • The White Lie

William Tufnell Le Queux (1864-1927) was a British journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat, a traveller, a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available. He studied painting in Paris. He was foreign editor of The Globe newspaper during the 1890s. He subsequently wrote professionally. He reported on the First Balkan War. He wrote in the genres of mystery, thriller, and espionage, particularly in the years leading up to World War I. Apart from fiction he wrote extensively on wireless broadcasting, various travel works including An Observer in the Near East and several short books on Switzerland, and an unrevealing and often misleading autobiography, Things I Know About Kings, Celebrities and Crooks. He also wrote The Secret of the Fox Hunter (1903), The Czar's Spy: The Mystery of a Silent Love (1905), The Four Faces: A Mystery (1914), The Minister of Evil (1918), The Doctor of Pimlico (1919) and Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo (1921).