Today, Lee Child is the epitome of all-American literary success. He owns a penthouse overlooking Central Park with a Renoir on the wall and a ranch in Wyoming. Child, however, was born James Dover Grant in Coventry and only started writing after a twenty-year career at Granada Television ended in redundancy. In 1997, he transformed himself into the thriller writer Child in a radical reinvention rivalling that of Jay Gatsby. Since then, West Midlands-born James Dover Grant has all but disappeared.

The history of pen names (or pseudonyms, or noms de plume) tells us much about authors, publishers and readers. Writers can have multiple reasons for using different names professionally. While some have spoken openly about their motivations (often in retrospect), others have been more reticent or vague. The birth names of some authors have been largely forgotten, their everyday lives dominated by their literary aliases. For others, a pen name is a practical tool used for a specific purpose, then abandoned.

Taking on a new identity is par for the course in the world of espionage, so it seems appropriate that MI5 and MI6 employee David Cornwell published his celebrated spy novels pseudonymously. But Cornwell’s cover was blown when his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became