Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, born in County Laois, Ireland, in 1904. After his mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his clergyman father, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. Educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, he graduated in 1927. Initially working as a teacher to supplement his poetry income, he published his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, in 1935. Blake went on to write nineteen crime novels, most featuring Nigel Strangeways, alongside numerous poetry collections and translations. During WWII, he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information, inspiring the Ministry of Morale in Minute for Murder. After the war, he joined publishers Chatto & Windus as an editor and director. Married twice, in 1928 to Constance M King and in 1951 to actress Jill Balcon, he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968 and died in 1972 at the home of his friend, writer Kingsley Amis. He was the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis and filmmaker Tamasin Day-Lewis.