Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE, born Winston Grime (30 June 1908 – 10 July 2003), was an English novelist best known for the Poldark series of historical novels set in Cornwall, though he also wrote numerous other works, including contemporary thrillers, period novels, short stories, non-fiction and plays.
[2] He had wanted to be a writer from an early age and, following the death of his father, he was supported by his mother while he wrote novels at home in longhand and attempted to get them published.
He lived in Perranporth from October 1925 until January 1960, then briefly, during the summer of 1960, in the south of France before finally settling in East Sussex.
[2] Additionally, the Winston Graham Historical Prize was initiated as part of the Centenary Celebrations, funded by a legacy from the author and supported by Pan Macmillan.
[2] In the 1941 spy thriller Night Journey, set mostly in Fascist Italy, the protagonist feels that Britain was likely to lose World War II, but is determined to go on fighting against all the odds.
The same is also the subject of a historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, set in Elizabethan Cornwall and also depicting the foundation and growth of Falmouth.
The latter was produced professionally at Salisbury (as Shadow Play) in 1978 and at Guildford, Birmingham, Bath, Richmond and Brighton (as Circumstantial Evidence) in 1979.
Seven Suspected (three acts) was first performed in Perranporth on 30 May 1933 and At Eight O'Clock Precisely (two acts) in Redruth on 18 April 1934, in both cases with the author and his wife-to-be Jean in the cast, Values was a one-act play performed by seven members of Perranporth Women's Institute at a Truro drama festival in 1936 and the full-length Forsaking All Others was not produced at all.
The first seven Poldark novels were adapted into two BBC television series broadcast in the UK between 1975 and 1977, which garnered audiences of about 14 million viewers.
Graham's novel Marnie (1961), a thriller, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964, with Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery in the lead roles.