Some facts about Leslie Charteris (born Leslie Bowyer-Yin), creator of the roguish thief, Simon Templar, the Saint:
A linguist, Charteris created Palaneo, a universal sign language designed to be global and easy to learn, a sort of Esperanto for the deaf.
While working on the Saint comics in the 1940s, he was unable to move to the US, which at the time had the Chinese Exclusion Act in law, prohibiting people of Chinese origin from moving to the US. He was eventually able to move to the US after the Chinese Exclusion Act was removed in the 1960s.
One of the founding members of MENSA. Charteris didn't just write crime or detective novels, but nonfiction on a variety of topics. A polymath, he has been described as the British Isaac Asimov.
Charteris published a poem in a national magazine at the age of nine.
Charteris's father, Dr. Yin Suat Chuan, was an anti-opium crusader and medical doctor in Singapore, and his brother Rev. Henry Bowyer-Yin was considered one of the greatest classical pianists of his age.
Charteris flew on the maiden voyage of the Hindenburg in 1936 (not the trip it exploded). As a well known writer at that point, he was interviewed about what he thought about the experience of zeppelin travel.
