Paul Gallico was born in New York City in 1897 and attended Columbia University. From 1922 to 1936 he worked for the New York Daily News. In 1936 he bought a house on top of a hill in South Devon, England, and settled down with a Great Dane and twenty-three assorted cats. In 1941 he made his name with The Snow Goose, a classic story of Dunkirk which became a worldwide bestseller. He wrote over forty books, four of which were the adventures of Mrs Harris: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (1958), Mrs Harris Goes to New York (1959), Mrs Harris, M.P. (1965) and Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow (1974). He died in 1976.
