Christianna Brand


Christianna Brand was a British crime writer and children's author born in British Malaya.

Background

Christianna Brand was born Mary Christianna Milne in Malaya but spent most of her childhood in England and India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant and governess. Brand also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Ann Ashe, Annabel Jones, Mary Brand, Mary Roland, and China Thompson. Christianna Brand served as chair of the Crime Writers' Association from 1972 to 1973.
Her first novel, Death in High Heels, was written while Brand was working as a salesgirl, the idea stemming from her fantasies about doing away with an annoying co-worker. In 1941, one of her best-loved characters, Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police, made his debut in the book Heads You Lose. The character would go on to appear in seven of her novels. Green for Danger is Brand’s most famous novel. The whodunit, set in a World War II hospital, was adapted for film by Eagle-Lion Films in 1946, starring Alastair Sim as the Inspector. She dropped the series in the late 1950s and concentrated on various other genres as well as short stories. She was nominated three times for Edgar Awards: for the short stories "Poison in the Cup" and "Twist for Twist" and for a nonfiction work about a Scottish murder case, Heaven Knows Who. She is the author of the children's series Nurse Matilda, which Emma Thompson adapted to film as Nanny McPhee.
Her Inspector Cockrill short stories and a previously unpublished Cockrill stage play were collected as The Spotted Cat and Other Mysteries from Inspector Cockrill's Casebook, edited by Tony Medawar.
She was the cousin of the illustrator Edward Ardizzone.

Novels

As Christianna Brand

Novels featuring Inspector Charlesworth

As Mary Brand

As Christianna Brand