28 June 1909 – Born

1925 – Scholarship to study engineering at Northampton Polytechnic in Islington – soon dropped out.

Trainee at Edison Swan Electrical Company and then their cable works in Gloucestershire.

Return to London, he composed a press release extolling the virtues of a batch of dodgy bulbs for car headlights.

1936 –The Dark Frontier – Debut novel published. Ambler later remembered 1936 as “the year in which Italy invaded Abyssinia, civil war broke out in Spain and Hitler ordered the German army to reoccupy the Rhineland… These were the things I was trying, in my own fictional terms, to write about.”

1937 – Uncommon Danger

1938 – Epitaph for a Spy

1938 – Cause for Alarm

1939 – The Mask of Dimitrios

1940 – Journey to Fear

1944 – The Way Ahead (Screenplay)

1947 – The October Man (Screenplay)

1949 – The Passionate Friends (Screenplay)

1950 – Highly Dangerous (Screenplay)

1951 – The Clouded Yellow (Screenplay)

1951 – The Magic Box (Screenplay)

1951 – Encore (Screenplay)

1952 – Judgement on Deltchev

1952 – The Card (Screenplay)

1953 – The Schirmer Inheritance

1953 – The Cruel Sea (Screenplay)

1953 – Academy Award for his script The Cruel Sea

1953 – Shoot First also known as Rough Shoot (Screenplay)

1954 – The Purple Plain (Screenplay)

1954 – Lease of Life (Screenplay)

1956 – The Night-Comers, also published as State of Siege

1957 – Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst (Screenplay)

1958 – A Night to Remember (Screenplay)

1959 – The Wreck of the Mary Deare (Screenplay)

1959 – Passage of Arms

1959 – Gold Dagger – Crossed Herrings Award for Passage of Arms

1962 – The Light of Day, also published as Topkapi.

1962 – Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Act of Faith (TV episode)

1964 – Edgar Award for The Light of Day/Topkapi, Best Novel

1964 – A Kind of Anger

1964 – To Catch a Spy (Anthology of stories)

1967 – Dirty Story

1969 – The Intercom Conspiracy, also published as The Quiet Conspiracy

1970 – Love Hate Love (TV Movie)

1972 – The Levanter

1972 – Gold Dagger Award for The Levanter

1974 – Doctor Frigo

1977 – Send No More Roses

1981 – The Care of Time

1985 – Here Lies: An Autobiography

1986 – Diamond Dagger Award

1987 – Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work

1991 – Waiting for Orders – eight stories mostly written in 1939-40 while Ambler awaited his call to military duty.

1993 – The Story so Far: Memories and Other Fictions – nine autobiographical stories covering different periods of Ambler’s life.

22 October 1998 -Died