Date of Birth: 
About William Haggard
- William Haggard (born Croydon 11 August 1907, died Frinton-on-Sea 27 October 1993) was the pseudonym of Richard Henry Michael Clayton, son of the Rev.
- Henry James Clayton and Mabel Sarah Clayton, an English writer of fictional spy thrillers set in the 1960s through the 1980s, or, as the writer H.
- R.
- F.
- Keating called them, "action novels of international power." Like C.
- P.
- Snow, he was a quintessentially British Establishment figure who had been a civil servant in India, and his books vigorously put forth his perhaps idiosyncratic points of view.
- The principle character in most of his novels is Colonel Charles Russell of the fictional Security Executive.
- During the years of the fictional spy mania initially begun by the James Bond stories Haggard was considered by most critics to be at the very top of the field.
- Keating says that "...the books were fore-runners in a trend that was noticeable in both British and American crime writing from the late 1960s onwards, a turning of the tide to flow to the right.
- After the revolution carried out in the late 1930s by Eric Ambler in the espionage field...
- a revolution which swung crime writing generally to the left...
- there had been little change.
- With the Haggard books the first signs of a silent swing began to show."After receiving his B.A.
- from Christ Church, Oxford, Haggard served on the General Staff in the Indian Army from 1939 to 1946, rising to Lieutenant Colonel.
- He obtained a M.A.
- from Oxford University in 1947 and served on the Board of Trade from 1947 to 1969, from 1965 to 1969 being the Controller of Enemy Property.
- He married Barbara Myfanwy Sant in 1936; they had one son and one daughter.
- Haggard's writing career began in 1958 with the publication of his first novel, Slow Burner.
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