Leslie Charteris

Leslie Charteris (; born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin; 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of his hero Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". Early life Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, in Singapore. His mother, Lydia Florence Bowyer, was English. His father, Dr S. C. Yin (Yin Suat Chuan, 1877–1958), was a Chinese physician who claimed to be able to trace his lineage back to the emperors of the Shang dynasty. Leslie became interested in writing at an early age. At one point, he created his own magazine with articles, short stories, poems, editorials, serials, and even a comic strip. He attended Saint Andrew's School, Singapore, and after moving to England, Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire. In 1926, Leslie legally changed his surname to "Charteris". In the BBC Radio 4 documentary Leslie Charteris – A Saintly Centennial, his daughter stated that he had selected the name from a telephone directory. This information is contradicted by other sources, however. William Ruehlmann (author of Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye, in an introduction to the 1988 edition of The Saint in New York, "He acquired..., in 1928, the legal name of Charteris, after the roguish Col. Francis, gambler, duellist and founder of the Hellfire Club."