Elizabeth Walter was an editor at Collins Publishers from 1961 and edited their Crime Club list from 1971 to 1993. A distinguished writer of stories of the supernatural, she had six volumes published, the last being In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters in 1979.

Julian Symons was elected President of the Detection Club in succession to Agatha Christie. From 1958 to 1968 he was crime reviewer for the London Sunday Times. He wrote a history of crime writing, Bloody Murder, of criminological studies and biographies and of numerous crime novels. An early recipient of the CWA (Crime Writers’ Association) Diamond Dagger he was also made an MWA (Mystery Writers of America) Grand Master. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Edmund Crispin reviewed mystery novels in the London Sunday Times from 1968. Between 1944 and 1953 he wrote the nine Gervase Fen detective stories which have given him a secure place in the annals of the genre.

Michael Gilbert was a prolific author of crime novels and short stories since 1947 and was a partner in a Lincoln’s Inn firm of solicitors. He edited the series Classics of Adventure and Detection published by Hodder & Stoughton. In 1994 he received the Lifetime Achievement CWA Diamond Dagger and was made a CBE in 1980.

Emma Lathen wrote many highly praised mystery novels notable for their solid backgrounds of aspects of American business life, of which Murder against the Grain won the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger for 1967. Under the name R. B. Dominic (a pseudonym which remained secret until 1977) there is also a series centred on the political life of Washington, equally noted for thorough research.

Colin Watson wrote Snobbery with Violence, a study of the sociological aspects of the crime story from the 1920s to James Bond. As a crime novelist himself, he produced a series of humorous mysteries centred on the fictional East Anglian town of Flaxborough.

Celia Fremlin wrote sixteen novels of suspense, of which The Hours before Dawn won an Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1959. A wartime interviewer for Mass Observation, the opinion sampling organization, she collaborated with the late Tom Hopkinson, its founder, in the publication Living through the Blitz.

Dorothy B. Hughes was a mystery critic for more than a quarter of a century chiefly for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Herald Tribune. Author of a dozen suspense novels, she also wrote a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner.

J. C. Trewin, a Cornishman and theatre historian, was a London drama critic from 1934, with the Illustrated London News from 1946. He wrote more than forty books and lectured extensively in Britain and abroad. A former literary editor of the Observer, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Past-President of the Critics’ Circle and was appointed OBE in 1981.

Philip Jenkinson was a film critic, researcher and consultant (most recently for Hindenberg and Valentino). He was a governor of the British Film Institute and co-author of the book Celluloid Rock. He was for a long time a presenter on BBC TV’s Late Night Line-Up and Film Night.

William Weaver reviewed crime novels for the London Financial Times and also wrote about music and theatre in Italy, where he lived from 1947. He also wrote regularly for the International Herald Tribune (Paris) and other Italian, British and American publications. His translations from the Italian (including authors such as Umberto Eco and Primo Levi) have won the National Book Award in the USA and the John Florio Prize in Britain.

Christianna Brand wrote a number of distinguished detective stories in the years between 1941 and 1955 and was a regular, and prize-winning, author of crime short stories. The American critic, Anthony Boucher, said of her that to find her rivals in the subtleties of the trade one must turn to ‘the greatest of the Great Names, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr.’

H. R. F. Keating Although best known for the award-winning series of crime novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID there were two other series: those with Harriet Martens – The Hard Detective – and those with Miss Unwin, Victorian Governess – under the pseudonym Evelyn Hervey. He wrote numerous non-fiction titles about crime writing and crime writers, including Writing Crime Fiction, which is still in print. He was The Times crime-book reviewer for fifteen years from 1967. Following the awards of two CWA Golden Daggers he was the recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.