Hammond Innes Biography and List of Works

Highly successful novelist, who published 35 books. Innes wrote in the tradition of Buchan and Haggard. His hobbies, travel and ocean racing, reflected in his plots.

Hammond Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, of Scottish descent. He was educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, and graduated in 1931. From 1934 to 1940 he worked as a staff member of the Financial News (later Financial Times), and then served in the Royal Artillery (1940-46) before becoming a fulltime writer. In 1937 he married Dorothy Mary Lange. She died in 1989.

Innes's first novel, THE DOPPELGANGER, appeared in 1937. It was followed by three other works - all these early books Innes later rejected, not because of the leftist views he infiltrated between the lines, but because he considered them more or less clumsy.

In 1940 appeared WRECKERS MUST BREATHE and THE TROJAN HORSE, published by Collins. Innes began writing The Trojan Horse just after the Russian invasion of Finland in 1939. A month after completing the book he joined the army, and was sent overseas. In 1941 Innes published a war novel, ATTACK ALARM, which was the only story of the Battle of Britain written on a gunsight under fire. Innes then edited army magazines in four countries. He did not return to England for three years. Before World War II he had written DEAD AND ALIVE, which appeared in 1946 and dealt with the black market in Rome and Napoli. After the war Innes devoted himself entirely to writing, becoming one of the most popular thriller writers. Until 1953 he also published children's books under the pseudonym Ralph Hammond.

THE ANGRY MOUNTAIN (1950) was a story of an attempt to fly out a Czech pilot who had fought in the Battle of Britain. Its depiction of a volcanic eruption was based on Innes's own experiences on Vesuvius. In 1944 Innes saw the centre of the mountain explode. "It was Pompeii over again. We knew what was going to happen; yet we felt no fear. It was all too vast." AIR BRIDGE (1951) set the pattern for Innes's future work. It was written immediately after Innes had flown the Berlin airlift in a York transport loaded with coal. After witnessing the planes endlessly rolling into the Tempelhof, day and night, Innes decided that he would never start on a book until he had personally researched the background. The story begins in England, where Bill Saeton is building a new aeroplane engine and planning to make fortune. He blackmails Neil Fraser, an ex-RAF-pilot to help him.

"The devil of it was the man's enthusiasm was infectious. I can see him now, talking softly in the hubbub of the bar, his eyes glittering with excitement, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his voice vibrant as he reached out into my mind to give me the sense of adventure that he felt himself. The essence of his personality was that he could make others believe what he believed. In any project, he gave himself to it so completely that it was impossible not to follow him. He was a born leader. From being an unwilling participant, I became a willing one."
(from Air Bridge)

In the 1960s Innes started to spend more time on the background work for his novels and slowed down his publishing speed. Innes also began to purchase land in Suffolk, Wales, and Australia, in order to protect the environment and plant trees. In the 1980s he pondered the ecological questions in some of his books. HIGH STAND (1985) was set in the wilderness of the Klondike; THE BLACK TIDE (1982) was a story about pollution. An earlier work, THE DOOMED OASIS (1960) was about saving an oasis from extinction. In the late 1950s Innes had been ashore with the first oil expedition on the Arabian coast of the Indian Ocean. NORTH STAR (1975), a story of infiltration and sabotage in the North Sea, also focused on oil. It was started while Innes was on board the Shell rig Staflo in the autumn of 1972, but finished two years later. "...World events caught up with me - the Arab-Israeli war, the oil embargoes, the shortages, the price rises... Suddenly North Sea oil was on everybody's lips, the one bright spot in the prevailing gloom. In these circumstances, I felt it essential to bring the book forward..."

Innes's other books, translated into over thirty languages, include THE LONELY SKIER (1947), BLUE ICE (1948), CAMBELL'S KINGBOM (1952), THE WRECK OF MARY DEARE (1956), ATLANTIC FURY (1962), and LEVKAS MAN (1971). GOLDEN SOAK (1973) was set in the Australia when the great mineral boom of 1969-70 began to collapse. For the novel, Innes travelled the trail through the Ophthalmia Range from Mt Newman to Mt Robinson.

The central theme in Innes's work is man against the forces of nature. In several stories the main character is searching the past in a remote location. Innes travelled to many parts of the world to ensure the authenticity in his works. He sailed to Antarctica for THE WHITE SOUTH (1949), to the islands of Greece for Levkas Man, and to the Indian Ocean for THE STRODE VENTURER (1965). As in the novels of Andrew Garve, Innes's knowledge of the sea and ships, and his own experiences as a seaman, provided material for his books. He was also vice-president of the Association of Sea Training Organization.

Innes historical works include THE CONQUISTADORS (1969) and THE LAST VOYAGE (1978), a fictionalised account of Captain Cook's voyage. His last novel, DELTA CONNECTION, appeared in 1996, and included all the familiar elements of a Hammond Innes book: daring escapes, cliffhanging situations, and overpowering forces of nature. In the story an English mining engineer escapes from Romania with a young mysterious woman. Their adventures lead to Afghanistan and to struggle for survival among the word's highest mountains.

Innes was awarded a C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire) in 1978. He received the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement award in 1993.

Several of Innes's works have been adapted for screen. An interesting but unrealised production was Alfred Hitchcock's version of the novel The Wreck of Mary Deare. The book belonged to MGM, and they got the director interested in the work. Hitchcock liked the powerful opening image of a ship drifting, deserted, in the English Channel. The rest was a courtroom drama in manifold flashbacks explaining the mystery. Hitchcock continued to develop ideas with his scriptwriter Ernest Lehman, but finally gave up the project.

Atlantic Fury (1962) - The story is set in the World War II. Iain Ross had been disgraced, and then drowned at sea, or so his family believed. A mission takes his brother Donald to the Hebrides to meet a Major Braddock, who is running the evacuation of the army base on the island of Laerg. Donald finds his brother living a new life in a dead mans name. Winter is closing in, and Braddock has his own reasons for wanting the army and Donald Ross off Laerg as quickly as possible, even in the face of a furious storm building out in the Atlantic.

THE DOPPELGANGER, (1937)
HIGH STAND, (1985)
HAMMOND INNES' EAST ANGLIA, (1986)
MEDUSA, (1988)
ISVIK, (1991)
TARGET ANTARCTICA, (1993)
DELTA CONNECTION, (1996)