Biography

Peter O'Donnell was born on April 11, 1920 in Lewisham, London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Modesty Blaise (1966), The Vengeance of She (1968) and My Name Is Modesty: A Modesty Blaise Adventure (2004). He was married to Constance Doris Green. He died on May 3, 2010 in Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK.

O'Donnell wrote 10 romance novels under the pseudonym "Madeleine Brent"; his identity remained a secret until 1991.

Announced his retirement from writing the "Modesty Blaise" comic strip in April, 2001.

He is survived by his wife, Constance; two daughters, Jill and Janet both of Bromley, Kent England; three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Son of Bernard O'Donnell and brother of Roy O'Donnell.

He served in a signal regiment in the British Royal Army assigned to France, Persia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Italy, and Greece.

I finished writing the scripts of the strip a few months ago and the final strip happens to fall on April 11, which is my 81st birthday. It wasn't planned. But it's a coincidence that rather pleases me. [Publisher's Weekly, April 2, 2001]

In 1996 interview about the inspiration for Modesty Blaise: I told one of the guys to take a mess tin full of stew and a mug of tea to her, and when she got up to go, I'd put a couple of tins of food near her, so she could get them without coming too close to us, and a can opener, too. I surmised that she was a refugee from somewhere in the Balkans, and she had been on their own for some time, because she wasn't fazed she was her own person, this little kid. And she washed the utensils in the stream, and brought them back to where we had put the tins of food, and indicated 'Were there for her?' We said yes, and she opened her bundle and put them in. She stood there for a few seconds, and then she gave us a smile, and you could have lit up a small village with that smile, and then she said something and walked off into the desert going south, and she was on her own. She walked like a little princess. I never forgot that child. I hope she is alive today; she would be in her 60's now. But when I wanted a background for Modesty Blaise, I knew that child was the story.