Early Life
The son of an antiquarian bookseller in London, he was introduced to cryptography when his father showed him Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Gold-Bug". From this early interest, he demonstrated his skill at codebreaking at an early age by deciphering his father's secret price codes that he wrote inside the covers of books. His father, Benjamin Marks, was joint owner of the Marks & Co bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, which achieved fame with the 1970 book of that title by New York writer Helene Hanff and the later plays and movie.
As a teenager, he earned pocket money by setting the difficult Times cryptic crossword.
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