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Introduction & Biography
'The Flaxborough Chronicles': Watson on Television The Flaxborough Citizen |
Welcome, one and all, to Snobbery with Violence...a better bet for your ninepence... Introduction and BiographyIntroduction Thank you for coming, and welcome. We will begin with an exercise, if you don't mind. Ponder these names, if you will, for just a moment, and then let me know what you think...ready? Very well then...Inspector Purbright...Sidney Love...Lucilla Teatime...Superintendent Chubb...do you have some sense yet of the sort of mind with which you are dealing?
The most attractive thing about the Flaxborough novels is the manner in which they are able to make the reader laugh to themself on a bus, in a plane, in bed at night, or even next to the couple in the cinema having a quiet snog. Watson combines skilled wordplay with a deadly, dry wit to achieve the near-impossible: a solidly readable comic detective story. Perhaps this is why his work, although available, does not readily present itself to view on the shelves of the local second-hand bookshops. These are the sort of books that, once found and read, are kept and treasured. Of course, if you haven't read them, then you have only my word to go on, so it might be best if you test the theory out for yourself. I'm sure that you're familiar with the drill. Biography Unfortunately, I am still in the process of searching for biographical material, and have thus far found only one photograph of Colin Watson (see below). If you have either of these items, or something else which you would like to contribute, please drop me a line. In the meantime, I have only two sources for information concerning Watson. The first is from a 1963 Penguin edition of 'Bump in the Night' which I acquired for the princely sum of 35¢ US + applicable taxes.
The text which follows is excerpted in it's entirety from the Dell 'Murder Ink' edition of 'Charity Ends at Home'. 'Colin Watson lives quietly in the heart of England in a town not unlike his fictional Flaxborough. An ex-journalist, he designs silver jewelry and is a member of the exclusive Detection Club. Mr. Watson is a recipient of the coveted Crime Writers' Silver Dagger Award. 'The Flaxborough Chronicles', a BBC television series, is based on Colin Watson's incomparable Flaxborough mysteries, which include 'Coffin Scarcely Used' and 'Just What the Doctor Ordered'... A further small amount of information may be gleaned from H. R. F. Keating's introduction to the 1988 reprinting of 'Snobbery with Violence' by St. Martin's Press. Watson died in 1983 at the age of sixty-two, therefore we may feel relatively secure in putting his birth in 1921 (however, see above). He had completed a revision to 'Snobbery' in 1979, and followed with two final Flaxborough books, 'Plaster Sinners' in 1980, and 'Whatever's Been Going on at Mumblesby?' in 1982. |
This page was last modified on 27 september 2002. Please send comments care of GPO, Flaxborough.
No? Then we shall have
to try again...Sylvia Staunch...Mrs. Tourniquet...Mortimer Hive...Brian
Hopjoy...Clement Grewyear...Chief Inspector Larch...Stanley Biggadyke...clearly,
these are names devised by the sort of man who is fond of a game,
who enjoys wordplay and might even be called too clever by half.
In short, Colin Watson.
'Colin Watson was born in
Surrey in 1920 and educated at Whitgift (the Whitgift School
in South Croydon, London). During his career as a journalist
he worked in London and Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was a leader-writer
for Kemsley Newspapers. He has also written 'Coffin, Scarcely
Used' (1958), which has appeared in Penguins, and 'Hopjoy Was
Here', which was published in 1962 and received a crime writers'
award. He now lives in Lincolnshire with his wife and three children.'