Eric Clifford Ambler was born in southeast London. His father, Alfred Percy Ambler, and his mother, Amy Madeleine Andrews, were music hall entertainers. Under their professional names, Amy and Reg Ambrose, they gave puppet shows and performed as living marionettes. As a boy Eric Ambler was attracted to the life of a music hall performer, but his parents insisted on educating him for a more conventional career. Ambler therefore attended Colfe's Grammar School in London, where he was extremely unhappy. His conflicts with academic authority in general, and with certain schoolmasters in particular, later provided the background for the bitter memories of one of his best-known characters, Arthur Abdel Simpson (The Light of Day , 1962, and Dirty Story, 1967). However, despite his rebelliousness (he later described himself as "a kind of juvenile delinquent"), Ambler was a competent student. At the age of fifteen he won an engineering scholarship to Northampton...