Ordeal by Fire: Canada, 1910-1945 [Canadian History Series #5]

Ralph Allen (1913—1966) was a Canadian journalist and novelist. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The son of a CPR railway agent, he lived in a succession of small towns across the Prairies. At sixteen he became a sports writer for the Winnipeg Tribune and later on for the Toronto Globe. In World War Two he enlisted as a gunner for the Royal Canadian Artillery and served until 1943 when he became a war correspondent for the Toronto Globe and Mail. He covered Canadian actions in Sicily, Italy and Normandy. After the war he worked as an editor for MacLean's Magazine and later on as managing editor of the Toronto Star. Allen wrote five novels some of which were based on his war experience. His most successful book, Peace River Country, was inspired by his own experience growing up in Western Canada. He also wrote Ordeal by Fire: 1919-1945, a book on early 20th century Canadian history. In 1990 he was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame honouring his work as an outstanding sports writer in the Prairies. (Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Canadian Football Hall of Fame)

Thomas Bertram Costain (May 8, 1885 – October 8, 1965) was a Canadian journalist who became a best-selling author of historical novels at the age of 57.

Costain's work is a mixture of commercial history (such as The White and The Gold, a history of New France to around 1720) and fiction that relies heavily on historic events (one review stated it was hard to tell where history leaves off and apocrypha begins). His most popular novel was The Black Rose (1945), centred in the time and actions of Bayan of the Baarin also known as Bayan of the Hundred Eyes. Costain noted in his foreword that he initially intended the book to be about Bayan and Edward I, but became caught up in the legend of Thomas a Becket's parents: an English knight married to an Eastern girl. The book was a selection of the Literary Guild with a first printing of 650,000 copies and sold over two million copies in its first year.

His research led him to believe that Richard III was a great monarch tarred by conspiracies, after his death, with the murder of the princes in the tower. Costain supported his theories with documentation, suggesting that the real murderer was Henry VII.

—Wikipedia