Geoffrey Household

Geoffrey Edward West Household was a prolific British novelist who specialised in thrillers. He is best known for his novel Rogue Male (1939). He was born in Bristol; his father Horace was a barrister. Household was educated at Clifton College, Bristol (1914-1919) and at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he received a B.A. in English literature in 1922. He became an assistant confidential secretary for Bank of Romania, in Bucharest (1922-1926). In 1926 he went to Spain, where he worked selling bananas as a marketing manager for the United Fruit Company (Elders and Fyffes). In 1929 Household moved to the United States where he wrote for children's encyclopedias and composed children's radio plays for the Columbia Broadcasting System. From 1933 to 1939 he was a traveling salesman for John Kidd, a manufacturer of printing ink, in Europe, the Middle East and South America. He served in British Intelligence during World War II in Romania, Greece and the Middle East. He married twice, secondly in 1942 to Ilona Zsoldos-Gutman, by whom he had a son and two daughters. After the War he lived the life of a country gentleman and wrote. In his later years, he lived in Charlton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire and died in Wardington.