Background

Richard Lakin Mason was born on May 16, 1919, in Hale, Manchester, United Kingdom, into a middle-class family.

Education

Mason attended the Downs Malvern, for 5 years from 1928. He studied under poet W. H. Auden in 1933. Additionally, he was educated at the Giggleswick School, as well as at the Bryanston School from 1933 to 1936.

Career

Mason served with the Royal Air Force in the Burma campaign during World War II and used his experiences there as the basis for many of his novels. He served as an interrogator of prisoners of war in India and Burma while attached to the 14th Army as an intelligence officer. That experience helped him to write his first novel titled The Body Fell on Berlin in 1943. His second novel, The Wind Cannot Read, appeared in 1946. It was followed by another mystery novel Angel Take Care. His next novel was titled The Shadow and the Peak.

Mason wrote The World of Suzie Wong in 1957. It focused on the relationship between an artist and his model in Hong Kong. His other writings are The Fever Tree and The Shadow and The Peak. The latter book was reissued in 1958 as The Passionate Summer. Richard Mason wrote several of his novels under pseudonym Richard Lakin.

Achievements

• Mason won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1948 for his novel The Wind Cannot Read.
  
  Mason also gained acclaim as the author of the 1957 bestseller The World of Suzie Wong. The novel was produced as a Broadway play and later as a film starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan.
  
  His novel The Shadow and the Peak was made into a film in 1958 as Passionate Summer (alternately titled "Storm over Jamaica").

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Wind Cannot Read

    (The Wind Cannot Read is the story of Michael Quinn, an En...)

    1946
  • The Fever Tree

    (From the bestselling author of The World of Susie Wong, a...)

    1962
  • The Shadow and the Peak

    (A gorgeously cinematic novel, The Shadow and the Peak is ...)

    1949
  • The World of Suzie Wong

    (Penguin Books reintroduces the timeless story of the love...)

    1957
  • The Passionate Summer
  • The Body Fell on Berlin 1943

Connections

In 1948 Mason married Anne Cumming, but they separated in 1958 and were later divorced. In the 1970s he was married to Sarett Rudleyn. That couple also divorced. Mason's third wife was Margot (“Maggie”) Wolf, they married in 1972 and had a son, Theo, and a daughter, Jessica.

child:

Theo Mason

child:

Jessica Mason

1-st wife:

Anne Cumming

She was a British translator and writer.

2-nd wife:

Sarett Rudleyn

3-rd wife:

Margot Wolf