Sir Charles Lloyd Birkin, 5th Baronet (24 September 1907 – 1985) was an English writer of horror short stories and the editor of the Creeps Library of anthologies.
Typically working under the pseudonym Charles Lloyd, Birkin's tales tended towards the conte cruels rather than supernatural fiction, although he did write some ghost stories.
He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture.What most marks his tales is the predictable nastiness of their consclusions...Doom arrives with monotonous regularity...For many readers, this genteelly tricked-up sadism was what horror was all about.Birkin was the son of Colonel Charles Wilfred Birkin and Claire Howe, the daughter of Alexander Howe.
He was educated at Eton College and was later employed by the publisher Philip Allan to anonymously edit the Creeps horror story anthologies, the first which appeared in 1932.
Greene wrote: "My escorting officer, Sir Charles Birkin, was slightly wounded three times in the first 15 minutes ashore and three men were killed within five feet of me...." After a long hiatus, Birkin resumed writing in 1960, following a return to London, and two new stories appeared in Dennis Wheatley's anthologies Quiver of Horror (1964) and Shafts of Fear (1964).