Roger Longrigg; Author Wrote Under Many Names

Roger Longrigg, 70, a British author of unusual versatility who achieved success writing novels and nonfiction under his own name and eight pseudonyms. Longrigg was born into a military family but chose advertising as his first career. His first novel, “A High-Pitched Buzz,” published in 1955, was inspired by his experiences in the advertising world. With his next few novels, he established a reputation as a stylishly comic writer with an ear for dialogue. He wrote 55 books in all, publishing several plays, histories and novels under his own name. Each of his pseudonymous selves had a different style and persona. As Laura Black, he wrote romantic historical novels. As Ivor Drummond, he was the author of jet-set thrillers. As Domini Taylor, he penned black comedies about dysfunctional families. His most notorious guise was the teenage Rosalind Erskine, a name with which he hoaxed the world for several years. Erskine was the author of what were purportedly thinly disguised memoirs of life at a girls boarding school where she and classmates ran a brothel and strip show for boys from a nearby school. That 1962 novel, “The Passion Flower Hotel,” became a bestseller and later a film starring Nastassja Kinski. On Feb. 26 at the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice in Farnham, England.