Winston Graham on AllMovie

A writer whose work proved the source for both Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie and the popular British television series Poldark, author Winston Graham's skillful penchant for creating dramatic, crime-oriented novels found his work frequently adapted for the big screen. A native of Manchester who frequently put pen to paper in his childhood, most of Graham's early novels were destroyed in the London blitz of 1941. Undaunted, he continued to write after serving in the British Coast Guard during World War II. It was shortly after his stint in the military that he would move to Cornwall and pen the first four books in the Ross Poldark book series. The BBC adapted the series in 1975 (it later aired in the U.S. on PBS) and carried the story with a 1977 miniseries with a belated continuation premiering in 1996. Graham wrote 40 novels in all, with the first of his works adapted to the screen being 1948's Take My Life. He died July 2003 in a nursing home, although the precise day and cause of his remained a mystery.