Hammond Innes

Ralph Hammond Innes (1913-1998) was an English novelist and journalist, born in Horsham, Sussex. He worked as a journalist from 1931 and published his first novel in 1937. After serving in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War, he wrote full-time, producing more than thirty adventure and suspense novels, as well as travel books and works for children.

His stories typically put ordinary people in extreme settings such as the Arctic, the open sea and remote deserts, and he was a keen yachtsman. He was appointed CBE in 1978 and died at his home in Kersey, Suffolk.