Alanna Knight
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Alanna Knight | |
|---|---|
| Born | Gladys Allan Cleet 24 February 1923 |
| Died | 2 December 2020 (aged 97) Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Other names | Margaret Hope |
| Occupation | Writer |
Alanna Knight MBE (24 February 1923 – 2 December 2020), born Gladys Allan Cleet, was a British writer, based in Edinburgh. She wrote over sixty novels, including romances, mysteries, crime, historical, and time travel stories, as well as plays, biographies, and histories. She sometimes also published under the pen name Margaret Hope.
Gladys Allan Cleet was from Jesmond, Newcastle, the daughter of Herbert Cleet and Gladys Allan Cleet. Her father was a butcher. She trained as a secretary as a young woman.[1]
Career
In 1964, in her forties, Knight became paralysed by polyneuritis (neuropathy), and her husband gave her an electric typewriter to help in her recovery.[2] By the time the paralysis ended five years later, she had written her first novel, Legend of the Loch (1969). She would continue writing, publishing over sixty books in her last fifty years. Her best known series was the Inspector Faro mysteries, set in the nineteenth century, but she also wrote a series about a time-traveling detective, Tam Eildor, and series about women detectives; she wrote gothic romances, true crime, writing advice, memoirs, and biography.[3]
Knight was honorary president of the Edinburgh Writers Club, a founder and honorary president of the Scottish Association of Writers, and an active member of the Crime Writers' Association.[4] She taught creative writing and lectured on the topic in various settings, from universities to Bloody Scotland, a literary convention.[5] She was also a portrait and landscape painter.[1]
Knight was made a Member of the British Empire for services to literature in 2014.[6]
