John Brophy (writer)

[3] After leaving university Brophy taught at a school in Cairo for two years in the 1920s[2] before his wife's ill health forced him to return to England.

Brophy later worked in a general store and as an advertising copywriter before becoming a full-time author, publishing his first novel, The Bitter End, in 1928, and going on to write about 40 books, mostly based on his experiences as a soldier in the British Army during World War I.

Through the 1930s he published at least one novel a year but it was not until 1939 that he had a real success, with his fictional life of William Shakespeare, Gentleman of Stratford.

[3] Brophy was also a critic for various London newspapers and magazines including The Daily Telegraph and Time and Tide as well as for the BBC.

His 1964 work on W. Somerset Maugham was written for the British Council, and his later novels included City of Departures (1946), A Woman from Nowhere (1946), Sarah (1948), Julian's Way (1949), Turn the Key Softly (1951) (filmed in 1953), The Prime of Life (1954), and The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1959), made into a 1960 film of the same name starring Peter O'Toole and Aldo Ray.