EXTRACTS: The Modesty Blaise Companion Expanded Edition © 2018 The Book Palace (425 PAGES in Full edition)

E X P A N D E D E D I T I O N T H E M O D E S T Y B L A I S E C O M P A N later when he encouraged him to write a stage play. After a two week run at the Theatre Royal, Windsor it had a successful UK tour starring Frank Windsor and Rula Lenska, came in to the West End for a five week run and toured again with success. When asked, he will tell you that one reason for his ability to be so prolific is his basic approach. A family man, he wanted to ensure a proper balance between work and family. When he went freelance he set up an an office in Fleet Street to be within easy reach of the editors who would provide him with work. He treated this as his job, with working hour from nine until five, five days a week, never at weekends and never taking work home. The office was a very large room at the top of 73 stairs over El Vino’s. The stairs helped keep him fit and if he felt a little under par there was a ever ready supply of sustenance downstairs. His working discipline goes some way to explain the sheer volume of creative writing he has produced over a long career and clearly shows the importance to him of his family. He married his wife, Constance, in 1940 and they are married still. After all this Peter still likes to suggest, somewhat diffidently, that it was not he who created Modesty but that she dreamed him up as her tame biographer and he had no choice in the matter. Whatever the truth, both Modesty Blaise and Peter O’Donnell have placed themselves very firmly in the literary and visual iconography of the twentieth century. Modesty Blaise ran in the Evening Standard from Strip No. 1 on Monday 13th May, 1963, without a break other than for industrial disputes, until Strip No. 10,183 on Wednesday 11th April, 2001, which was, incidentally the eighty first birthday of its creato r. XI