Philippe de Baleine, a prominent French journalist and magazine editor and also known for his parallel career as a prolific author under  a pseudonym, died  in Paris at the age of 96. His death was confirmed by his daughter

An author of some 50 novels and nonfiction books, Mr. de Baleine received two prizes from the Académie Française, France’s top literary academy, including one for “Voyage Espiègle et Romanesque sur le Petit Train du Congo” (roughly “A Mischievous and Romantic Trip on Congo’s Little Train”). A colorful travel journal published in 1993, it chronicled a trip of more than 300 miles aboard a train that connected Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, to the city of Pointe-Noire on the Atlantic Ocean.

It was one of several books in which Mr. de Baleine recounted journeys on historic railroad lines in West Africa, a region that was fertile ground for his travel writing.

Philippe de Baleine did a bold writing of a detective  series about the British royal family under the pseudonym Margaret Ring. This series was not translated into English language and wrote about the widow of a military attache’ of Queen Elizabeth who lived in a farm in England.