Madeline brent biography

Books by Madeleine Brent

English writer

For other people named Peter O'Donnell, see Peter O'Donnell (disambiguation).

Peter O'Donnell (11 April &#; 3 May ) was an English writer of mysteries and of comic strips, best known as the creator of Modesty Blaise, an action heroine/undercover trouble-shooter. He was also an award-winning gothic historical romance novelist who wrote under the female pseudonymMadeleine Brent, in , his novel Merlin's Keep won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Biography

Born on 11 April in Lewisham, London, O'Donnell was the son of Bernard O'Donnell, a journalist on the Empire News, and was educated at Catford Central School.

He began to write professionally at the age of In he joined the British Army, and during the war served as an NCO in mobile radio detachment (3 Corps) of Royal Corps of Signals in the 8th Army. He saw active service in Persia in , after which his unit was moved to Syria, Egypt, the Western Desert, and Italy, and he was with forces that went into Greece in October After the war, O'Donnell returned to civilian life and began to script comic strips, including an adaptation for the Daily Express of the James Bond novel, Dr. No. From to he wrote for Garth, and from to Romeo Brown (with Jim Holdaway as an artist).

In addition to the comic strips and graphic novels based on Modesty Blaise, O'Donnell published two collections of short stories and twenty novels. He wrote a play that was widely performed in the s, Mr. Fothergill's Murder, and wrote for television and film. He wrote for women's magazines and children's papers early in his career. His most famous creation, Modesty Blaise, was first published in in comic strip form. For the first seven years, the strip was illustrated by Holdaway until his death in Enrique Badia Romero then became the artist,