William Le Queux

William Le Queux (1864–1927) was an Anglo-French writer, born in London to a French father and English mother, who worked as a journalist in Paris and London before producing some 150 novels of espionage, invasion and international intrigue. The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and The Invasion of 1910 (1906), serialized in the Daily Mail, fed the spy fever of the Edwardian decade and helped bring about the creation of the British Secret Service Bureau. He claimed to be an intelligence agent himself, a friend of royalty and a target of German assassins, claims that were largely invention. He was also an early wireless enthusiast.