Author Le Queux William

re he edited the magazines Gossip and Piccadilly before joining the staff of the newspaper The Globe in 1891 as a parliamentary reporter. In 1893 he abandoned journalism to concentrate on writing and travelling.[1] Le Queux mainly wrote in the genres of mystery, thriller, and espionage, particularly in the years leading up to World War I, when his partnership with British publishing magnate Lord Northcliffe led to the serialised publication and intensive publicising (including actors dressed as German soldiers walking along Regent Street) of pulp-fiction spy stories and invasion literature such as The Invasion of 1910, The Poisoned Bullet, and Spies of the Kaiser. These works were a common phenomenon in pre-WWI Europe, involving fictionalised stories of possible invasion or infiltration by foreign powers; Le Queux's specialty, much appreciated by Northcliffe, was the German invasion of Britain. He was also the original editor of Northcliffe's War of the Nations. The Invasion of 1910, which originally appeared in serial form in the Daily Mail newspaper from 19 March 1906, was a huge success. The newspaper's circulation increased greatly, and it made a small fortune for Le Queux, eventually being translated into twenty-seven languages and selling over one million copies in book form.[2] The idea for the novel is alleged to have originated from Field Marshal Earl Roberts, who regularly lectured English schoolboys on the need to prepare for war.[3] Le Queux was reportedly less than happy about an abridged German translation (with an altered ending) appeared the same year: Die Invasion von 1910: Einfall der Deutschen in England translated by Traugott Tamm.[3] At the beginning of World War I Le Queux became convinced that the Germans were out to get him for "rumbling their schemes" and from then on became involved in a continual struggle with his local police force and the Metropolitan Police over his request for special protection from German agents. The authorities, however, in the words of Edward Henry (head of the Metropolitan Police) saw him as "not a person to be taken seriously" and saw no need to fulfill his request.[4] Le Queux was interested in radio communication; he was a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers and carried out some radio experiments in 1924 in Switzerland with Dr. Petit Pierre and Max Amstutz. That same year he was elected the first President of the Hastings, St. Leonard's and District Radio Society, whose inaugural lecture was delivered on 28 April 1924 by John Logie Baird. Le Queux was eager to help Baird with his television experiments but said that all his money was tied up in Switzerland. He did however write an article, Television-a fact which appeared in the Radio Times in April 1924 which praised Baird's efforts.[5] Apart from fiction, Le Queux also wrote extensively on wireless broadcasting, produced various travel works including An Observer in the Near East and several short books on Switzerland, and wrote an unrevealing and often misleading autobiography, Things I Know about Kings, Celebrities and Crooks (1923). The latter contains, among other fantastic stories, the claim by Le Queux that he saw a manuscript in French written by Rasputin stating that Jack the Ripper was a Russian doctor named Alexander Pedachenko who committed the murders to confuse and ridicule Scotland Yard.[6] Le Queux authored 150 novels dealing with international intrigue as well as books warning of Britain's vulnerability to European invasion before WWI.[7]