EAST Oxford author Tim Griggs has died aged 65.

Although he had been writing for most of his life, it was not until Mr Griggs moved to Oxford that a publisher finally agreed to print his work.

His thriller, Redemption Blues, was written in 1999 and was a huge hit overseas, going on to sell around a million copies.

Mr Griggs followed it up with The End of Winter, which was not published in English until this year but became a bestseller in France and in Germany it reached number three on the Stern fiction lists.

The Warning Bell, a contemporary novel dealing with a Second War mystery, was later released under the pen-name Tom Macauley and he changed his name again for Distant Thunder, set in the British Raj and published last year.

He would write most days in his office in Warwick Street but was also a member of art clubs and writers’ groups.

For the latest novel he called himself TD Griggs, because his publishers felt his real name Tim wasn’t “epic enough”. Tim Griggs was born in Surrey on September 27, 1948.

His father, Percy Griggs, wrote novels and children’s books and Mr Griggs began writing at an early age — first writing versions of War of the Worlds and Ivanhoe and then reviewing amateur dramatics performances for his local paper.

He went on to do an English degree at Leeds University before completing a masters in archaeology at University College London, fuelled by the hope it might take him somewhere dramatic.

After failing to find employment in one of the more exotic parts of the world, Mr Griggs became a reporter at the Dartford & Swanley Chronicle before becoming chief reporter at a daily paper in the Midlands.

He was headhunted by Shell, and found himself writing and editing a magazine for the North Sea oil industry where he discovered an interest in the industry and an ability to write about it.

This was followed by jobs in Nigeria and Taiwan before he ended up in Australia, getting through immigration by telling them he wanted to start a fictional editorial agency — which he eventually did, setting upThe Corporate Storyteller.

It was Down Under that he met Jenny Hislop, who he married in 1989 and she encouraged him to begin writing short stories.

In the late 1990s the couple returned to the UK, first renting a cottage in the Malvern Hills and then choosing to settle in Oxford.

Tim Griggs died on October 23 and is survived by his wife. The couple had no children. His funeral took place at Wolvercote woodland cemetery on November 4.