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Victor Canning

Born

in Plymouth, Devon, The United Kingdom

June 16, 1911

Died

February 21, 1986

Genre

History, Mystery & Thrillers

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Victor Canning was a prolific writer of novels and thrillers who flourished in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, but whose reputation has faded since his death in 1986. He was personally reticent, writing no memoirs and giving relatively few newspaper interviews.

Canning was born in Plymouth, Devon, the eldest child of a coach builder, Fred Canning, and his wife May, née Goold. During World War I his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders, while he with his two sisters went to live in the village of Calstock ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railways and later became station master. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid 1920s they moved to Oxford where his father had foun Victor Canning was a prolific writer of novels and thrillers who flourished in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, but whose reputation has faded since his death in 1986. He was personally reticent, writing no memoirs and giving relatively few newspaper interviews.

Canning was born in Plymouth, Devon, the eldest child of a coach builder, Fred Canning, and his wife May, née Goold. During World War I his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders, while he with his two sisters went to live in the village of Calstock ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railways and later became station master. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid 1920s they moved to Oxford where his father had found work, and Victor attended the Oxford Central School. Here he was encouraged to stay on at school and go to university by a classical scholar, Dr. Henderson, but the family could not afford it and instead Victor went to work as a clerk in the education office at age 16.

Within three years he had started selling short stories to boys’ magazines and in 1934, his first novel. Mr. Finchley Discovers his England, was accepted by Hodder and Stoughton and became a runaway best seller. He gave up his job and started writing full time, producing thirteen more novels in the next six years under three different names. Lord Rothermere engaged him to write for the Daily Mail, and a number of his travel articles for the Daily Mail were collected as a book with illustrations by Leslie Stead under the title Everyman's England in 1936. He also continued to write short stories.

He married Phyllis McEwen in 1935, a girl from a theatrical family whom he met while she was working with a touring vaudeville production at Weston-super-Mare. They had three daughters, Lindel born in 1939, Hilary born in 1940, and Virginia who was born in 1942, but died in infancy.
In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. Canning worked in anti-aircraft batteries in the south of England until early 1943, when he was sent to North Africa and took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian campaigns. At the end of the war he was assigned to an Anglo-American unit doing experimental work with radar range-finding. It was top secret work but nothing to do with espionage, though Canning never discouraged the assumption of publishers and reviewers that his espionage stories were partly based on experience. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major.
He resumed writing with The Chasm (1947), a novel about identifying a Nazi collaborator who has hidden himself in a remote Italian village. A film of this was planned but never finished. Canning’s next book, Panther’s Moon, was filmed as Spy Hunt, and from now on Canning was established as someone who could write a book a year in the suspense genre, have them reliably appear in book club and paperback editions on both sides of the Atlantic, be translated into the main European languages, and in many cases get filmed. He himself spent a year in Hollywood working on scripts for movies of his own books and on TV shows. The money earned from the film of The Golden Salamander (filmed with Trevor Howard) meant that Canning could buy a substantial country house with some land in Kent, Marle Place, where he lived for nearly twenty years and where his daughter continues to live now. From the mid 1950s onwards his books became more conventional, full of exotic settings, stirring action sequences and stock characters. In 1965 he began a series of four books featuring a private detective called Rex Carver, and these were among his most successful in sales terms.

He died in 1986. ...more

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Victor Canning’s books

Average rating: 3.92 · 5,606 ratings · 729 reviews · 168 distinct works • Similar authors

	Mr Finchley Discovers His England (Mr Finchley, #1) 4.01 avg rating — 1,231 ratings — published 1934 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mr Finchley Goes to Paris (Mr Finchley, #2) 4.25 avg rating — 446 ratings — published 1971 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mr Finchley Takes the Road (Mr Finchley, #3) 4.38 avg rating — 359 ratings — published 2009 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Runaways 4.13 avg rating — 251 ratings — published 1972 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	قبضة الشيطان الذهبية by Victor Canning, فكتور كايننج, إيناس النجار (Translator) 3.17 avg rating — 242 ratings — published 1969 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Whip Hand 3.51 avg rating — 209 ratings — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	New Windmills: Flight of the Grey Goose 4.27 avg rating — 135 ratings — published 1973 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Crimson Chalice 3.76 avg rating — 128 ratings — published 1976 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Painted Tent 4.24 avg rating — 110 ratings — published 1976 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fountain Inn (Classic Canning Book 7) 4.27 avg rating — 94 ratings — published 1939 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Victor Canning…

Series by Victor Canning

Mr Finchley (3 books)
by

Victor Canning

4.13 avg rating — 2,036 ratings

Smiler (3 books)
by

Victor Canning

4.19 avg rating — 496 ratings

Rex Carver (4 books)
by

Victor Canning

3.69 avg rating — 396 ratings

The Crimson Chalice trilogy (3 books)
by

Victor Canning

3.77 avg rating — 181 ratings

Quotes by Victor Canning (?)

“Without questions there are no answers. And without answers no truth, no progress, no future.”
― Victor Canning, The Crimson Chalice

4 likes

“That day will come. But at the moment it is this day that has to be lived.”
― Victor Canning, The Crimson Chalice

4 likes

“From each god his own way of revelation. And for each man his own way of marking the shadow which his god casts.”
― Victor Canning, The Crimson Chalice

2 likes

See all Victor Canning's quotes »

Polls

Which more modern English Mystery would you like to read with us during August? Please vote here.

Call for the Dead by John le Carré

7 votes, 38.9%

Miss Beeton’s Murder Agency by Josie Lloyd

5 votes, 27.8%

Dead in the Morning by Margaret Yorke

4 votes, 22.2%

The Whip Hand by Victor Canning

2 votes, 11.1%

18 total votes

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Victor Canning’s Followers (62)

Victor Canning

Combine EditionsVictor Canning’s books

Series by Victor Canning

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Topics Mentioning This Author

Combine Editions
Victor Canning’s books