Rupert Croft-Cooke


Rupert Croft-Cooke was an English writer. He was a prolific creator of fiction and non-fiction, including screenplays and biographies under his own name and detective stories under the pseudonym of Leo Bruce.

Life

Rupert Croft-Cooke was born on 20 June 1903, in Edenbridge, Kent, the son of Hubert Bruce Cooke, who worked in the London Stock Exchange, and his wife Lucy, a daughter of Dr. Alfred Taylor, and was educated at Tonbridge School and Wellington College. At the age of seventeen, he was working as a private tutor in Paris. He spent 1923 and 1924 in Buenos Aires, where he founded the journal La Estrella. In 1925 he returned to London and began a career as a freelance journalist and writer, at about this time combining his middle name into his surname. His work appeared in several magazines, including New Writing, Adelphi, and the English Review. In the late 1920s the American magazine Poetry published several of his plays. He was also a radio broadcaster on psychology. In 1929 he became a dealer in antiquarian books, continuing this business until 1931. From 1930 he spent a year in Germany, and in 1931 lectured in English at the Institut Montana Zugerberg in Switzerland. In 1940 he joined the British Army and served in Africa and India until 1946. He later wrote several books about his military experiences. From 1947 to 1953 he was a book reviewer for The Sketch.
Croft-Cooke was a homosexual, which brought him into conflict with the laws of his time. In 1953, at a time when the Home Office was seeking to clamp down on homosexuality, he was sent to prison for six months on conviction for acts of indecency. Croft-Cooke's secretary and companion, Joseph Alexander, had met two Navy cooks, Harold Altoft and Ronald Charles Dennis, in the Fitzroy Tavern near Tottenham Court Road in London, and invited them to spend the weekend at Croft-Cooke's house in Ticehurst, East Sussex. During the weekend, they consumed food and alcohol and had sex with both Croft-Cooke and his assistant. On their way home from the weekend, they got drunk and assaulted two men, one of whom was a policeman. They were arrested and agreed to testify against Croft-Cooke to get immunity from prosecution for the assault charges.
The case of Croft-Cooke was discussed by the Committee who produced the Wolfenden report into changing the law on prostitution and homosexuality, specifically by Philip Allen, a civil servant testifying on behalf of the Home Office. Allen described Croft-Cooke and Alexander as attempting to "interfere" with the sailors, who resisted these advances. Michael Graham-Harrison, a junior Home Office civil servant, attempted to correct Allen's rhetorical overreaching, noting that the sailors were "picked up in a place frequented by homosexuals" and arguing that he did "not think anybody could believe for a moment that they did not know what they were going for".
Croft-Cooke went to Wormwood Scrubs, and then to Brixton Prison, and later wrote about the British penal system in The Verdict of You All.
The 1957 war film Seven Thunders was based on his novel. He also wrote for television, including two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959. He is best known today for the detective stories he wrote under the name of Leo Bruce. His detectives were called Carolus Deene and Sergeant Beef.
From 1953 to 1968 he lived in Morocco, fearing continued persecution in Britain for homosexuality, then moved on to live in Tunisia, Cyprus, West Germany, and Ireland.
Croft-Cooke returned to England in the 1970s and died in 1979, when he was living at 4, Amira Court, Bourne Avenue, Bournemouth. He left an estate valued at £9,297.

Selected works as Rupert Croft-Cooke

Non-fiction

  • God in Ruins
  • Darts
  • How to Get More Out of Life
  • Major Road Ahead
  • The Circus Book
  • Rudyard Kipling
  • How to Enjoy Travel Abroad
  • The Sawdust Ring with W.S. Meadmore
  • Cities with Noel Barber
  • Buffalo Bill with W.S. Meadmore
  • Sherry
  • Port
  • Smiling Damned Villain
  • English Cooking, a New Approach
  • Madeira
  • Cooking for Pleasure
  • Wine and Other Drinks
  • Bosie: The Story of Lord Alfred Douglas
  • Tales of a Wicked Uncle
  • Feasting With Panthers: A New Consideration of Some Late Victorian Writers
  • Exotic Food
  • The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde
  • Circus: A World History with Peter Cotes

    'The Sensual World' series of autobiography

  • The World is Young
  • The Man in Europe Street
  • The Circus has no Home
  • The Moon in My Pocket
  • The Life for Me
  • The Blood-Red Island
  • The Verdict of You All
  • The Tangerine House
  • The Gardens of Camelot
  • The Quest for Quixote
  • The Altar in the Loft
  • The Drums of Morning
  • The Glittering Pastures
  • The Numbers Came
  • The Last of Spring
  • The Wintry Sea
  • The Gorgeous East
  • The Purple Streak
  • The Wild Hills
  • The Happy Highways
  • The Ghost of June
  • The Sound of Revelry
  • The Licentious Soldiery
  • The Dogs of Peace
  • The Caves of Hercules
  • The Long Way Home
  • ''The Green, Green Grass''

    Supplementary

  • The World is Young
  • The Man in Europe Street
  • The Circus Has No Home
  • ''The Quest for Quixote''

    Novels, poetry and plays

  • Clouds of Gold
  • Songs of a Sussex Tramp
  • Tonbridge School . Published in aid of the school's War Memorial Fund
  • Songs South of the Line
  • The Telegram
  • She that is Heaven's Queen Blackfriars,
  • In Snow Blackfriars,
  • Twenty Poems from the Spanish of Becquer
  • Downstairs
  • That Pueblo
  • Three Miles from Tilbury
  • Some Poems
  • Banquo's Chair
  • Troubador
  • Give Him the Earth
  • Tap Three Times
  • Night Out
  • Cosmopolis
  • Release the Lions
  • Deliberate Accident
  • Picaro
  • Shoulder the Sky
  • Blind Gunner
  • Crusade
  • Kingdom Come
  • Rule Britannia
  • Same Way Home
  • Glorious
  • Octopus
  • Ladies Gay
  • Miss Allick
  • Wilkie
  • Brass Farthing
  • Three Names for Nicholas
  • Nine Days with Edward
  • Harvest Moon
  • Fall of Man
  • Seven Thunders
  • Barbary Night
  • Thief
  • Clash by Night
  • Paper Albatross
  • St George for England
  • Three in a Cell
  • Wolf From the Door
  • Exiles
  • While the Iron's Hot
  • Under the Rose Garden
  • Nasty Piece of Work
  • Conduct Unbecoming. Novelisation of the film Conduct Unbecoming

    Short stories

  • The Appointed Key. Reynold's Newspaper,
  • The Legacy. Pearson's Weekly,
  • An Eye for an Eye. Everybody's Weekly,
  • Politeness Pays. Everybody's Weekly,
  • Mr Smith's Hallucinations. Daily Herald,
  • Seat 116. Pearson's Weekly,
  • Publicity. Daily Herald,
  • Headlines. Everybody's Weekly,
  • Termination 2. Melbourne Herald,, as Rupert Croft-Cook
  • The Uninvited Guest. Everybody's Weekly,
  • Pharaoh With His Wagons
  • The Late Mr Trilbert. The Sketch,
  • Combat. Falkirk Herald, 3 January 1940, Reprinted in Linlithgowshire Gazette,
  • A Football for the Brigadier and other Stories
  • Grandmother Smith. John Bull,
  • A Few Gypsies
  • The Line Went Dead. The Tatler,

    Short non-fiction

  • What the Prince Will See in Chile. Yorkshire Post,
  • South America. Yorkshire Post,
  • The Criminal Mind. Reynolds’ Illustrated News,
  • Freedom for Sale. Northern Daily Mail,
  • Talking about Freedom. Northern Daily Mail,
  • Perils of Philanthropy. Northern Daily Mail,. Reprinted, Montrose Review,
  • A Protest against Placards. Northern Daily Mail,
  • The Tyranny of Uniforms. Evening News,. Reprinted: Motherwell Times,
  • Freedom on the Continent. Linlithgowshire Gazette,
  • Is He Trying to Make You Furious?? Daily Mirror,
  • The Man in Europe Street. Midland Daily Telegraph,
  • I’m Tired of Being Treated Like a Child. Illustrated Leicester Chronicle,
  • Freedom is in Danger. Falkirk Herald,. Reprinted: Northern Daily Mail,
  • Paradise for Busybodies. Falkirk Herald,
  • Freedom of the Seas. Dumfries and Galloway Standard & Advertiser,. Also published: Falkirk Herald,
  • Living in a Tent. Dumfries and Galloway Standard & Advertiser,
  • The Lesser Freedom. Dumfries and Galloway Standard & Advertiser,
  • The Tyranny of Time. Northern Daily Mail,
  • H E Bates. The Sketch,
  • Tom Thumb: The Midget Who Made a Fortune. The World's News,

    Selected works as Leo Bruce

Under the name of Leo Bruce, one series of novels featured Sergeant Beef, a British police officer; a second featured Carolus Deene, senior history master at the fictional Queen's School, Newminster, as an amateur detective.

Novels

Sergeant Beef series

  • Case for Three Detectives : An example of the locked room type of murder mystery, this book spoofs three famous fictional detectives, Lord Peter Wimsey, as Lord Simon Plimsoll, Hercule Poirot as Monsieur Amer Picon, and Father Brown, under the name of Monsignor Smith. Repr Academy Chicago Publishers, 1980; Chicago Review Press, 2005.
  • Case Without a Corpse
  • Case With No Conclusion
  • Case With Four Clowns. Repr Academy Chicago Publishers, 2010.
  • Case With Ropes and Rings. Repr Chicago Review Press, 2019.
  • Case For Sergeant Beef
  • Neck and Neck. Repr Academy Chicago Publishers, 2019.
  • Cold Blood. Repr Academy Chicago Publishers, 2019.
  • Murder in Miniature: The Short Stories of Leo Bruce. Academy Chicago Publishers, 1992.