P. M. Hubbard

Philip Maitland Hubbard (9 November 1910 – 17 March 1980) was a British writer. He was known principally for his crime and suspense novels and stories, although he wrote in other genres as well, for example contributing short stories and poetry to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and articles, verse, and parliamentary reports for Punch.

Hubbard was born in Reading in Berkshire, the second son of Wilton Hubbard, a stockbroker, and his wife Millicent, who had been born in Bombay. His grandfather, Henry Dickenson Hubbard (1824–1913), was a clergyman of the Church of England who left a substantial fortune. Hubbard was brought up mostly in Guernsey in the Channel Islands, where his father had gone to improve his health, and was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, then at Jesus College, Oxford, where in 1933 he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry with a poem called "Ovid among the Goths".

On 3 October 1934, by Open Competition, Hubbard joined the Indian Civil Service and went on to become the last District Commissioner of the Punjab before Indian independence in 1947. After that, he worked for the British Council and then as Deputy Director of the National Union of Manufacturers. From 1960 until his death he worked as a freelance writer. Apart from novels, he also wrote articles for Punch and light verse.

He settled at Horsehill Cottage, Stoke Abbott, near Beaminster, Dorset, where he lived with his wife and three children, Jane, Caroline and Peter, until separating from his wife. In 1973 he moved to south-west Scotland.

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