Jack Trevor Story
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jack Trevor Story (1917-1991) was a British novelist, publishing prolifically from the 1940s to the 1970s. His best-known work is the story for Alfred Hitchcock's comedy The Trouble with Harry, the Albert Argyle trilogy (Live Now, Pay Later, Something for Nothing and The Urban District Lover), and his Horace Spurgeon novels (I Sit in Hanger Lane, One Last Mad Embrace).
His domestic life was chaotic, owing to his serial infidelity and bankruptcy; this often provided the inspiration for his work. He was from a working class background and was essentially self-taught as a writer, basing his approach on that of his idol William Saroyan. He first achieved success as a genre writer, with the Pinetop Jones Western stories (writing as Bret Harding); he later contributed to the Sexton Blake detective series. His writing is unpretentious and effective, although it often assumes the reader's sympathies lie with the protagonist even when behaving poorly. Politically he was determinedly anti-establishment.
Although his works never reached a wide audience, he was respected by many in the media. He wrote a weekly column for The Guardian in the 1970s, and appeared on TV in the series Jack on the Box in 1979. He wrote several screenplays, including the TV play Mix Me a Person, and the film version of Live Now - Pay Later. His final broadcast was an audio diary, Jack's Last Tape.
