{{Use British English|date=August 2011}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}} '''Roger Erskine Longrigg''' (1 May 1929 – 26 February 2000) was a prolific British novelist. As well as publishing some books under his own name, he principally wrote popular novels in a wide range of different styles, using different pseudonyms for each. He wrote the lightly erotic school story, ''The Passion Flower Hotel'', as '''Rosalind Erskine'''; Scottish historical novels as '''Laura Black'''; spy thrillers as '''Ivor Drummond'''; mystery thrillers as '''Frank Parrish'''; and black comedies about dysfunctional families as '''Domini Taylor'''. His other pseudonyms included '''Megan Barker''' and '''Grania Beckford'''. He had 55 books published in total.<ref>There is a bibliography in {{cite book|editor=Lesley Henderson|title=Twentieth-century crime and mystery writers|year=1991|publisher=St. James Press|isbn=978-1-55862-031-5|author=George Kelley|contribution=Parrish, Frank|pages=[https://archive.org/details/twentiethcentury00einl/page/831 831–3]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/twentiethcentury00einl/page/831}}</ref>
==Life== Roger Longrigg was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a brigadier. He lived as a child in the Middle East, where his father was stationed, but returned to England to study at Bryanston School.<ref name="Fowler">{{cite book |last1=Fowler |first1=Christopher |title=The Book of Forgotten Authors |date=2017 |chapter=Rosalind Erskine|publisher=Riverrun |isbn=978-1-78648-490-1 |page=108}}</ref> He then read History at Magdalen College, Oxford. After completing his degree, he started working for an advertising agency in 1955, before writing two comic novels, ''A High-Pitched Buzz'' (1956) and ''Switchboard'' (1957), based on his experiences there. Both were published under his real name.<ref name=independent>[http://elisa-rolle.dreamwidth.org/918922.html Graham Watson, Obituary, ''The Independent'', 1 March 2000]</ref>{{deadlink|date=May 2025}}
In 1959 he married, and decided to become a full-time writer, adopting different styles and pseudonyms to suit different audiences. He published under eight pseudonyms.<ref name="Fowler"/> His real identity was kept secret. One of his most successful novels, written as Rosalind Erskine, was ''The Passion Flower Hotel'' (1962), a story of how 15-year-old girls at a boarding school establish a brothel to cater for boys from a nearby school. The mystery surrounding the true authorship of the book was eventually revealed by the "William Hickey" column of the ''Daily Express''. The novel was later turned into a stage musical scripted by Wolf Mankowitz, a radio play, and a film starring Nastassja Kinski.<ref name=independent/><ref name="j009">{{cite web | title=Roger Longrigg, 70; Wrote Comic Novels | website=The New York Times | date=20 March 2000 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/20/arts/roger-longrigg-70-wrote-comic-novels.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140716155020/https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/20/arts/roger-longrigg-70-wrote-comic-novels.html | archive-date=16 July 2014 | url-status=live | access-date=24 May 2025}}</ref><ref>[http://www.booksmonthly.co.uk/passionflower.html Critique of ''The Passion Flower Hotel'' at BooksMonthly.co.uk]</ref>
Longrigg appears to be the first writer to turn Jane Austen's fiction into erotica, with ''Virtues and Vices: A Delectable Rondelet of Love and Lust in Edwardian Times'' (1980), a bawdy, comic rewriting of ''Persuasion'' set a century after the original version.<ref>[https://www.salon.com/2017/07/16/fifty-shades-of-mr-darcy-a-brief-history-of-x-rated-jane-austen-adaptations/ Devoney Looser, "Fifty Shades of Mr. Darcy,” Salon (16 July 2017)]</ref> He wrote the novel under the pseudonym Grania Beckford.
On another occasion, as Frank Parrish, he was awarded the John Cheever mystery writers' prize for a first published thriller, creating some embarrassment when it was revealed that in fact it was his 20th published book. A later novel, ''Mother Love'' (1983), credited to Domini Taylor, was adapted into a TV series of the same title in 1989, starring Diana Rigg and David McCallum.<ref name=independent/> He also wrote books about horse racing and fox hunting.<ref name="j009"/>
In 1995, the bookseller John Francis Phillimore declared in an interview that Roger Longrigg's horse-racing adventure story ''Daughters of Mulberry'' (1961) "is the greatest book ever written in any language by anybody. Everyone who has read it agrees with me."<ref>[http://www.sheila-markham.com/interviews/john-francis-phillimore.html Interview first published in ''The Bookdealer'', 1995]. Retrieved 23 March 2015</ref>
Longrigg died in Farnham, Surrey, at the age of 70.<ref>[https://www.flickr.com/photos/33894481@N04/3998257469/ Gravestone of Roger Longrigg]</ref> His ''New York Times'' obituary says that he was married to "the novelist Jane Chichester", and that they had three children.<ref name="j009"/> In Christopher Fowler's article about Longrigg, he says that he has not been able to find anything out about Jane Chichester.<ref name="Fowler"/>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Longrigg, Roger}} Category:1929 births Category:2000 deaths Category:20th-century British novelists Category:British male novelists Category:20th-century British male writers