Rupert Croft-Cooke

The son of Hubert Bruce Cooke, of the London Stock Exchange, and his wife Lucy, a daughter of Dr Alfred Taylor,[2] Rupert Croft-Cooke was born on 20 June 1903, in Edenbridge, Kent,[3] and was educated at Tonbridge School and Wellington College (Shropshire). At the age of seventeen, he was working as a private tutor in Paris. He spent 1923 and 1924 in Buenos Aires, where he founded the journal La Estrella. In 1925 he returned to London and began a career as a freelance journalist and writer, at about this time combining his middle name into his surname. His work appeared in several magazines, including New Writing, Adelphi, and the English Review. In the late 1920s the American magazine Poetry published several of his plays. He was also a radio broadcaster on psychology. In 1929 he became a dealer in antiquarian books, continuing this business until 1931. From 1930 he spent a year in Germany, and in 1931 lectured in English at the Institut Montana Zugerberg in Switzerland.[2] In 1940 he joined the British Army and served in Africa and India until 1946. He later wrote several books about his military experiences. From 1947 to 1953 he was a book reviewer for The Sketch.[4]

Croft-Cooke was a homosexual, which brought him into conflict with the laws of his time. In 1953, at a time when the Home Office was seeking to clamp down on homosexuality, he was sent to prison for six months on conviction for acts of indecency. Croft-Cooke's secretary and companion, Joseph Alexander, had met two Navy cooks, Harold Altoft and Ronald Charles Dennis, in the Fitzroy Tavern near Tottenham Court Road in London, and invited them to spend the weekend at Croft-Cooke's house in Ticehurst, East Sussex. During the weekend, they consumed food and alcohol and had sex with both Croft-Cooke and his assistant. On their way home from the weekend, they got drunk and assaulted two men, one of whom was a policeman. They were arrested and agreed to testify against Croft-Cooke to get immunity from prosecution for the assault charges.[5]

The case of Croft-Cooke was discussed by the Committee who produced the Wolfenden report into changing the law on prostitution and homosexuality, specifically by Philip Allen, a civil servant testifying on behalf of the Home Office. Allen described Croft-Cooke and Alexander as attempting to "interfere" with the sailors, who resisted these advances. Michael Graham-Harrison, a junior Home Office civil servant, attempted to correct Allen's rhetorical overreaching, noting that the sailors were "picked up in a place frequented by homosexuals" and arguing that he did "not think anybody could believe for a moment that they did not know what they were going for".[5]

Croft-Cooke went to Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton Prison and later wrote about the British penal system in The Verdict of You All (1955).[6]

The 1957 war film Seven Thunders was based on his novel. He also wrote for television, including two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959. He is best known today for the detective stories he wrote under the name of Leo Bruce. His detectives were called Carolus Deene and Sergeant Beef.[7]

From 1953 to 1968 he lived in Morocco, fearing continued persecution in Britain for homosexuality, then moved on to live in Tunisia, Cyprus, West Germany, and Ireland.[6]

Croft-Cooke returned to England in the 1970s and died in 1979, when he was living at 4, Amira Court, Bourne Avenue, Bournemouth. He left an estate valued at £9,297.[8][4]

Under the name of Leo Bruce, one series of novels featured Sergeant Beef, a British police officer; a second featured Carolus Deene, senior history master at the fictional Queen's School, Newminster, as an amateur detective.

• Murder Will Out: The Detective in Fiction, T. J. Binyon (Oxford, 1989) ISBN 0-19-219223-X pp. 54,123

• Rupert Croft-Cooke Archived 17 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine at croft-cooke.co.uk
• The Passing Tramp (6 February 2013). "The Lost Stories of Leo Bruce (Rupert Croft Cooke)". thepassingtramp.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 7 November 2017.