Josephine Tey: A Life

Josephine Tey was the pen-name of Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952). Born in Inverness, MacKintosh lived several ‘lives’: best known as Golden Age Crime Fiction writer ‘Josephine Tey’, she was also successful novelist and playwright ‘Gordon Daviot’. Originally trained as a P.E. teacher, she returned home to keep house for her widowed father. Tey’s novels include The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar, and the unique Richard III mystery The Daughter of Time – once voted the best crime novel of all time. Her work was adapted for radio, TV and film, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock. Meanwhile, as ‘Gordon Daviot’, she wrote smash-hit play Richard of Bordeaux, making a star out of her leading man, John Gielgud. She worked with actors such as Laurence Olivier, and was friends with many of the stars of London’s 1930s Theatreland. At one point, she had plays on simultaneously in the West End in London and on Broadway, and even wrote for Hollywood – all from her home in the north of Scotland. Romantic yet practical, Josephine Tey was a fascinating woman who led a life full of contrasts.Genuinely modest, the full scale of her achievements, and her significance to Scottish fiction, has not been recognised until now.

Reviews of Josephine Tey: A Life

'This biography of one of the most complex and fascinating twentieth-century Scottish women writers brings her out from the shadows of her several pen-names and draws attention not only to her importance as a playwright and novelist, but to the whole milieu that allowed her to live a double life between domestic commitments in Inverness and cosmopolitan literary relationships in the south of England. A truly necessary and fascinating biography.' Professor Ian Brown, President, Association for Scottish Literary Studies. 'A much needed biography of one of the great mystery writers of the twentieth century. 'Josephine Tey' is also a well-kept secret in Scottish Literature: a forensic stylist and the most elegant of minds.' Professor Gerard Carruthers, Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow.