Richard Hughes(1900-1976)

British novelist Richard Hughes was born in Weybridge, Surrey, in 1900. A graduate of Oriel College in Oxford, he wrote his first play, "The Sisters' Tragedy", while still an undergraduate. Although at first he wrote plays--he was at one time president of the Welsh National Theatre--and short stories, he eventually turned to novels as his main writing outlet. In the mid-'20s his health took a turn for the worse, and he spent the better part of a year recuperating, most of it in the US and several months at a quiet farm in Virginia.

Probably his best-known work is "The Innocent Voyage", a novel he wrote in 1929 about several English schoolchildren in Jamaica being sent back to England but whose ship is captured by a pirate captain. It was made into a successful film in 1965, A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), starring Anthony Quinn.