Peter O'Donnell was born in London on April 11, 1920. During World War II, he served in a signal regiment in the British Army, assigned to France, Persia (now Iran), Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Italy and Greece. He began drawing comic strips for children as a teenager, and after the war he wrote a number of different strips including Dr. No, Garth, and Romeo Brown on a freelance basis. He created the Modesty Blaise comic strip, which was published in The London Evening Standard from 1963 to 2001. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 20 Modesty Blaise novels including Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death and The Night of the Morningstar, two short stories collections, and a play entitled Mr.… Fothergill's Murder. He wrote a series of 19th-century romance novels under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. He also wrote for television, film, women's magazines and children's papers. He died on May 3, 2010 at the age of 90.