Today I weep for Ukraine and the environment. I really don’t understand my fellow human beings. What a terrible confession for an author! Many young black men voted for a racist. Many ‘Latinos’ voted for a man who builds a wall to keep people of their ancestry out &labels them ‘rapists’. Many women have voted for a man who abuses women and has ensured that American women don’t have rights over their own bodies. All who voted for Trump have handed control of the economy to a crook. It’s strange that, in these circumstances, crime fiction feels safe. In most, justice triumphs in the end. So as a bit of nostalgia, I’m reminiscing about two masters of the craft.
Memories of Colin Dexter and PD James
For twenty years, I was a freelance writer for the magazines of The Oxford Times. Every month for 10 years, I wrote the Oxford Castaway series. It was like Desert Island Discs without the music. I invited my castaways to take inspirational art objects and books to my desert island. ‘Castaway’ is a magic word; even Lord Patten of Barnes, the retiring Chancellor of Oxford University and last governor of Hong Kong, let me cast him away on Utopia. The monthly features were turned into three books.
Crime writer, Colin Dexter, was an early castaway. The story he told me of how he wrote the Morse stories was unique. Fellow castaway and crossword compiler Don Manley was his best friend. Pasquale, Quixote, Giovanni Duck and Bradman are Don’s pseudonyms. Don told me the origin of MORSE!
“Colin and I are two of the most successful winners of the Adzed competitions. The other most successful winner is Jeremy Morse of All Souls: it was Jeremy who gave his name to Colin’s detective. Colin also persuaded me to be Quixote in The Oxford Times in the eighties. At that time Colin also set for The Oxford Times under the pseudonym,‘Codex’.
Colin made his Inspector Morse a keen solver and also used crosswords as part of the plot for ‘The Silent World of Nicolas Quinn’.
I wondered if Don had other connections with the Morse books?
“We discussed the background detail for that book and I contributed ideas to a couple of others. Colin attributed a clue to me as The Oxford Times’ Quixote even though he wrote the clue himself. It was Bradman’s famous duck.”
The solution is, of course ‘Donald’.
I love this happy pic with Colin and some of his famous fellow Oxford Castaways* taken at the first anniversary of the publication of Oxford Castaways.(* Sir Roger and Lady Moyra Bannister, Korky Paul, Victor Glynn the film producer, Bill Heine-he with the shark in his roof etc.) Colin, like the other castaways in this photo, strode happily between Town and Gown.I had to talk on his behalf at a small Literary Festival when he was taken ill. He told me some great stories not only about the writing but also about the filming of the series. He always had a walk on role in the films.
At times Oxford feels like the Murder Capital of the World. There’d often be four bodies per episode in Morse books. We are not talking FACT but FICTION. Dorothy Sayers was born in 1893. Her father was headmaster of Christchurch School (Oxford). Her mystery novel Gaudy Nights locations include Christ Church and St Cross Church and Balliol was her sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey’s alma mater. That mystery crime book didn’t, however, include a murder, so Dorothy is not responsible for the death count but, before long, the list of deadly crime mysteries set in Oxford grew and grew.
The outstanding crime writer, PD James, was born in Oxford and although she didn’t set her books in the city, she transplanted some buildings such as St Barnabas Church into her novels. In a different life, she was my customer at the Jam Factory. The Jam Factory was a place people came for a chat and a coffee. There was no pressure to buy although people did or we wouldn’t have survived. When her success grew, she bought a house in St John Street and furnished much of it at the Jam Factory (1987-1998). One of the things she bought from me was this watercolour set in Teignmouth with Edwardian ladies in bustles and bathing machines. (Pic) Only when she wrote a cheque signed, Phyllis D James, I realised who she was. I was a fan of her books so when she came, once a month on a Saturday, we always chatted. One week she looked solemn as she told me she was working on something different. She had been thinking deeply about male violence and decided to write Children of Men.
I have since become an author but my passion is for telling inspirational but forgotten stories. I want you to know about the courageous Stars artists (Beijing1979) and Asoka who was responsible for the religion we know as Buddhism but was forgotten for 1000 years. My traditional publisher Claret Press doesn’t publish Whodunits although she does do political thrillers. CWA award winner Julie Andersen published her Cassandra series with Claret Press. So when I decided to write a whodunit set in the village where I live on the edge of Oxford, I self-published Current of Death But it only added two bodies to the Oxford death count.
Colin and Phyllis were friends and her pic was alongside his at his memorial service in Christ Church Cathedral which was organised by Don Manley.
