Items16The creator’s order
  1. 1Ian FlemingIan FlemingBorn 28 May 1908Ian Fleming spent the Second World War as personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, planning deception schemes and forming the commando unit 30 Assault Unit. Casino Royale (1953) and the Bond novels that followed drew on that world of gadgets, codenames and…0i
  2. 2John le CarréJohn le CarréBorn 19 Oct 1931David Cornwell worked for MI5 and then MI6 in the 1950s and early 1960s, writing his first novels as John le Carré while still an intelligence officer in Bonn. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) let him leave the service, and the tired, morally compromised spies of his books, George Smiley…0i
  3. 3Andy WarholAndy WarholBorn 6 Aug 1928Andy Warhol spent the 1950s as one of New York's most successful commercial illustrators, drawing shoe advertisements for I. Miller and magazine work using a blotted-line technique that allowed quick reproduction. His Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and silkscreen portraits took the repetition, brand…0i
  4. 4Michael CrichtonMichael CrichtonMichael Crichton paid his way through Harvard Medical School by writing thrillers under pen names, and graduated as a doctor in 1969, the year The Andromeda Strain made his name. His medical training ran through his techno-thrillers and above all ER (1994), which he created from a screenplay based…0i
  5. 5Billy ConnollyBilly ConnollyBorn 24 Nov 1942Billy Connolly served an apprenticeship as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards in the 1960s before turning to folk music with the Humblebums. His long, rambling stand-up stories are steeped in the banter, characters and gallows humour of the yards, and he has always credited the shipbuilders with…0i
  6. 6Stephen KingStephen KingBorn 21 Sept 1947Stephen King worked in an industrial laundry and as a high-school English teacher in Maine while selling short stories to men's magazines. In his memoir On Writing he describes how an earlier job as a school janitor, cleaning a girls' changing room, gave him the opening scene of Carrie (1974), and…0i
  7. 7Harrison FordHarrison FordBorn 13 Jul 1942Unhappy with the small parts he was being offered in the late 1960s, Harrison Ford taught himself carpentry to support his family, with clients including the writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. The trade let him turn down roles he did not want, and he was still taking carpentry work when…0i
  8. 8Jo BrandJo BrandJo Brand worked for about a decade as a psychiatric nurse, much of it in south London, before stand-up took over in the late 1980s. Her deadpan, unsentimental comedy grew out of that work, and she drew on it directly as co-writer and star of Getting On (2009 to 2012), a bleakly funny BBC sitcom set…0i
  9. 9John GrishamJohn GrishamBorn 8 Feb 1955John Grisham practised criminal defence and personal injury law in Mississippi for about a decade and served in the state legislature. A harrowing testimony he heard in court inspired A Time to Kill (1989), and The Firm, The Pelican Brief and his other legal thrillers rely on the procedure and…0i
  10. 10David SimonDavid SimonDavid Simon spent more than a decade as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun, including a year embedded with the city's homicide unit for his book Homicide (1991). That reporting became the basis of the series Homicide: Life on the Street, and its institutional detail, from police paperwork to…0i