Anthony Berkeley Cox was born in Watford, Hertfordshire. He was educated at a day school in Watford and at Sherborne College, Wessex. He went to University College, Oxford where he obtained a Classics degree. When the First World War broke out, he enlisted and attained the rank of lieutenant. He came out of the war with his health permanently impaired due to being gassed in France. In 1917, he married Margaret Fearnley Farrar. They divorced in 1931. Cox spent time in several occupations including real-estate dealing. He was a director of Publicity Services Ltd and one of the directors of A.B. Cox Ltd. In 1932, he married Helen Peters but the marriage broke down in the late Forties. Apart from crime fiction, he also wrote humorous sketches, comic operas, fantasies and political analysis. He wrote under his own name and under the pseudonyms 'Francis Iles' and 'A. Monmouth Platts'. In 1925 he created 'Roger Sheringham', an amateur sleuth.