Born in Inverness, Scotland, The United Kingdom, 1896 (died 1952), Josephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh. Josephine was her mother's first name and Tey the surname of an English Grandmother. As Josephine Tey, she wrote six mystery novels including Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant. The first of these, 'The Man in the Queue' (1929) was published under the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot, whose name also appears on the title page of another of her 1929 novels, 'Kit An Unvarnished History'.

Mackintosh also wrote plays (both one act and full length), some of which were produced during her lifetime, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot.

Alfred Hitchcock filmed one of her novels, 'A Shilling for Candles' (1936) as 'Young and Innocent' in 1937 and two other of her novels have been made into films, 'The Franchise Affair' (1948), filmed in 1950, and 'Brat Farrar' (1949), filmed as 'Paranoiac' in 1963.

Her novel 'The Daughter of Time' (1951) was voted the greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.