Episode 118: All About Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery)

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, David Whittle

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Carolyn Daughters 00:57

Today’s sponsor is Linden Botanicals, a Colorado-based company that sells the world’s healthiest herbal teas and extracts. Their team has traveled the globe to find the herbs that offer the best science-based support for stress relief, energy, memory, mood, kidney and joint health, digestion, and inflammation. U.S. orders over $75 ship free. To learn more, visit lindenbotanicals.com and use code MYSTERY to get 15% off your first order. Welcome back, everyone. It’s good to be back. We’re keeping David Whittle, our guest, up all night.

Sarah Harrison  01:33

Yes, yes, we are.

Carolyn Daughters  01:35

He’s learning it here first.

Sarah Harrison  01:37

He preferred the night. He preferred the night. I’ll say we offer today.

Carolyn Daughters  01:41

Yes, we have been talking about Edmund Crispin, Robert Bruce Montgomery, and Gervase Fen. And it has been a super fun conversation. And we’re gonna, if you’ve missed our first conversation about The Moving Toyshop, go back and listen. Go back. Not in. It’s not in order, though. You can listen to this one first, and then listen to that. But it’s a really fun book, and we strongly recommend that you read it. And before we get too deep into it, we have a listener of the episode, and our listener today is Michele Bowman of Brunswick, Maryland. Brunswick is a charming little town right on the C&O Canal towpath, and it’s just it’s a charmer. If you haven’t been there and you go to Maryland and you’re over by the C&O Canal, you’re over by Harper’s Ferry. Check it out! It’s a cute little town. Thanks to Michele for being a listener.

Sarah Harrison  02:47

Thank you, Michele. What is she going to get, Carolyn, as a stunning listener in a cute town?

Carolyn Daughters  02:57

At least one sticker. But I also want. What we have a sponsor, Linden Botanicals, that recently provided us with some magnets. So we have some really cool new swag to add. I need to get it over to you, Sarah, which I’m going to do this next week. And so I’ll probably give her a couple different things because that’s what we do.

Sarah Harrison  03:24

Generous to a fault.

Carolyn Daughters  03:25

That’s how we humbly like to describe ourselves. And Sarah, how would someone become our listener of the episode? It sounds very difficult.

Sarah Harrison  03:34

It’s not, Carolyn. You can do almost anything. Oh, reach out on social media, message us, provide a home for Carolyn to stay in. Join the Raven Patreon, the Sherlock level Patreon. Just all-I mean, all kinds of things you can do to let us know you’re out there listening, and we will be delighted. We do not have a social media team, so we interact with everyone directly, which is wonderful. And so, reach out, get in touch, let us know your thoughts about this or any upcoming books. I love it when people talk about upcoming books because then we can incorporate that in future episodes.

Carolyn Daughters  04:23

I like that, too. Every once in a while, I reach out to somebody by email or through social media, and they’re like, “What? Who are you? What’s this? And they’re following us on social media. They already know who we are, but they can’t like wrap their brain around the fact that we’re writing. So it really is Sarah and me. We are the social media team. We are the website team. We are the team.

Sarah Harrison  04:49

Yes, and so for this month, our book club selection is The Moving Toyshop, which was what the last episode was all about. That’s by Robert Bruce Montgomery, also known as Edmund Crispin. Where in Gervase Fen and Richard Cadogan? We learned how to say his name in the last episode. Did I say it right? Cadogan.

David Whittle  05:08

Cadogan. Spot on.

Sarah Harrison  05:10

All right. Poet and would-be bon vivant arrives. What he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of dreaming spiers, also known as Oxford. All right, so listen to our last episode to get the full details on this extremely amusing and literary mystery. The Edmund Crispin being the alias of Robert Bruce Montgomery, who was born in Buckinghamshire. Okay, how do you say that, David? Buckinghamshire, Buckinghamshire. How do you say that?

David Whittle  05:49

As you said in Buckinghamshire.

Carolyn Daughters  05:51

Buckinghamshire. I’m amazing.

Sarah Harrison  05:53

I said that right in 1921.

Carolyn Daughters  05:58

You’re like a native, Sarah.

Sarah Harrison  06:00

I am. I really am. After graduating from Saint John’s College, Oxford, in 1943, he was a member of a famous literary circle that included Kingsley, Amis, and Philip Larkin. Yes. Under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin, he wrote 42 short stories and nine detective novels, including *The Moving Toyshop* In addition to his reputation as a leader in the field of mystery genre, Robert Bruce Montgomery was a successful concert pianist and composer, most notably pinning the score for the well-known *Carry On* series.

David Whittle  06:36

I have to say, he wasn’t actually really a concert pianist.

Sarah Harrison  06:40

Oh, what?

David Whittle  06:41

It seems to get pedaled out now and then. He did play the piano, but he wasn’t a concert pianist as such.

Sarah Harrison  06:47

All right, all right, piano player, part time.

Carolyn Daughters  06:53

We’re going to say periodically pedaled out. I’m changing it right now.

Sarah Harrison  06:57

Yes, yes.

David Whittle  06:59

He wouldn’t have minded being called that, I don’t suppose for a minute.

Carolyn Daughters  07:02

Our guest, who is back for our second episode, David Whittle. So happy to have you here. David’s a music scholar, educator, and the acclaimed biographer of Robert Bruce Montgomery, better known, as we all know now, as Edmund Crispin. A classically trained musician and longtime director of music at Leicester Grammar School, David earned his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham, with research focused on Montgomery’s life and work. His biography, Bruce Montgomery, Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books, is widely regarded as the definitive study of the composer and golden age mystery author. Welcome back, David. We’re excited to talk more about Robert Bruce Montgomery!

David Whittle  07:48

Thank you. I’m glad to be back. Welcome.

Carolyn Daughters  07:51

So when I see Robert Bruce Montgomery / Edmund Crispin in the biography, I think Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Am I correct?

David Whittle  08:00

Not really. I don’t know why. I often wonder. I mean, it drives me around the bend when some of these authors, of there’s John Banville in Ireland who writes as Benjamin Black, and it says that on the cover. And you think, what is he a schizophrenic? I’m not sure I’m allowed to say that these days.

Sarah Harrison  08:20

It’s not even a secret.

David Whittle  08:21

Well, it’s not even a secret, and it wasn’t really with Edmund Crispin and Robert Bruce Montgomery. I suppose he just wanted to keep the music set because I think he always wanted to be better known as a composer rather than a writer, detective. He didn’t. He didn’t really think detective fiction was occupation for a high because he was. I mean, he was clearly a highly intelligent person, and he, I suppose, was very literary in other ways. He told the story of when he was at Oxford, he always thought crime fiction was a bit beneath him, and then somebody, a great friend of his, who he respected, respected the friend’s literary taste, said, “Go on, you ought to read John Dickson Carr. How interesting!

David Whittle  09:11

He read The Crooked Hinge, and he wrote later on. He said, “You know, and I not expecting very much. He said, “I got into bed with his book. He said, “But at two in the morning, I was still awake with the eyes popping out my head when whatever it was going on. Somebody was shouting down the stairs in The Crooked Hinge, and he got hooked, and had a go at one himself. (Later on with the Gervase Fen series.) But I think he also thought film music wasn’t quite, the thing as well. So it’s sad in a way, I think he felt that he wasn’t film music. The thing was basically, I think he was fairly lazy, in the sense that he could get a lot of money writing film music for not a great deal of effort that appealed to him, which is why, after he’d written the first eight novels. Was the last 152 or 53? I can’t remember now. Anyway, the next 10 years was basically all film scores. He didn’t do any. He might have written one or two short stories, but basically he worked at film music for the next decade. You can almost break his life into these things because it brought him in a lot of money. Unfortunately, also led him, I think, into the world of the alcoholics in the film business, and of course, that was yes downhill thereafter. I think he just felt that film music and detective fiction wasn’t really quite the thing. But on the other hand, he brought the money in.

Sarah Harrison  10:38

Carolyn, that reminds me. We read C.W. Grafton’s The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope a while back, and that’s another one that actually really made me sad because Grafton was a really funny book. Actually, is one of my favorites, and C.W. Grafton perceived himself as a failure at life, whereas we would have perceived him as wildly successful, like his legal career and his writing career, and he’s just like, that’s all stupid.

Carolyn Daughters  11:12

That was that, and there was a madcap energy to some elements of The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, which reminds me a little bit of Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery). I think I don’t know that they ever met, and imagine they did not. But I don’t know. But I think they would have enjoyed each other immensely.

David Whittle  11:29

Well, yes, and I mean, because of course Robert Bruce Montgomery wrote Edmund Crispin. Got success very early with his novels, and that’s when he wrote most of his concert music because thereafter film music took over. He was well known, well, getting well known as a composer, and certainly very well known as a detective fiction writer (of the Gervase Fen series. In his 20s, when people like Amos and Philip Larkin, of course, weren’t, which didn’t go down too well sometimes. But then, of course, I wanted to call the biography. Unfortunately, with the fairly academic publisher, they didn’t go for it. But he referred to himself somewhere as feeling like an aging tortoise. Sorry, an aging hare being overtaken by a squad of implacable tortoises, as his as his career was descending slightly, and Amos and Lark and his other friends were going up.

Carolyn Daughters  12:25

Started taking off exactly.

David Whittle  12:26

They certainly overtook him, and so and I yes, I just think yes, he didn’t think where he got most of his work done was quite the thing, as they’d say over here, ad.

Sarah Harrison  12:43

Oh, that’s too bad. What did he think the thing was? Was it the composing? What was he thinking? He wanted to do.

David Whittle  12:51

I think he would want. I think he would have preferred to be known as a as a composer of inverted comma serious music. We’re about to do a CD of his song.

Sarah Harrison  13:06

Yes.

David Whittle  13:07

And things which I think is his best stuff. I think this is another reason I think film music suited him because, of course, it was short bursts. You don’t have to write a whole symphony. You’re writing short bits, and I think his songs and his small scale stuff is actually I think his best stuff. So best music. So with a bit of luck, we’ll get that before the general public. But I think he basically was very happy getting quite a lot of money for not doing much work, and he would much  rather be down at the pub or whatever.

Carolyn Daughters  13:43

I’m down. I’m actually. I would also like to get a lot of money for not a lot of work, and I love the pub. I love whatever the pub is. Like Gervase Fen, I’m a very big fan.

David Whittle  13:57

I’ll just have a quick drink while you’re telling me about it.

Carolyn Daughters  14:00

Yes, please. So I get that, but I wondered the degree to which he was not inclined to fixate on a literary focus of his books. I mean, there’s literary references throughout, but to not say, okay, this is going to be the highest of literature. If that freed him up to just create this Gervase Fen character, who is, I’ve said the word madcap multiple times in the last episode. You can have actually do a pub drinking game to it in the previous episode if you’d like to, but all that just freed him up to just put whatever he wanted to put on the page and create just almost a frolic on the page.

David Whittle  14:58

Well, yes. The problem is because he got hooked into the film world, as I say, because it was, it paid pretty well for, not that much work. But unfortunately, then he started drinking. So we get to about 1960 when he’s what 40, and he’s been financially becomes a bit of a mess because, of course, he’s not. Well, he gets dropped by the film world, because he’s becoming unreliable at finishing. I mean, we said in the previous episode about the Carry On film probably not being that well known in America, but the chap who he became unreliable. The chap who took over from him, I think, was just as big a drinker as Robert Bruce Montgomery was, but he got the scores finished on time, because it’s not like these days when films are shot and they don’t come out for quite a long time, do they? So the post production go on in those days. He was writing two minutes of for orchestra on his every day. He was getting put on the train down in Devon up to London for the copyist to write the parts out for the orchestra because it was being recorded in a handful of days. So he was under great pressure, and he didn’t like that either. To get it done, it’s a very different world now, of course. But in those days, that’s what he was doing. So he just became unreliable and got dropped by everybody, and then of course wasn’t writing novels either. So of course his income was, and he had this big house, big bungalow built down in Devon, and of course just the worst time in all sense because things were going downhill, both in career-wise and health. He also had osteoporosis.

Sarah Harrison  16:39

Oh no.

David Whittle  16:40

Not good if you’re an alcoholic for falling over and constantly. He was in an ad hospital all the time, towards the end. It’s all very sad. He never trained as a musician,  because at Oxford, as we said in the previous episode, he was doing modern languages and he just had a few. It was all he was. He taught himself basically to orchestrate and all these things and write novels.

Sarah Harrison  17:05

How can you teach yourself to orchestrate? I mean, I you can teach yourself an instrument, but a whole orchestra.

David Whittle  17:13

Well, he might have had one or two lessons, but I’ve yet to track down anybody who did it. But he listened to so much music. He was so much up to date that he would listen, I think, and just pick it up. Because as he did, no creative writing courses in those days either for the novels, of course. He just, I rather like John Dickson Carr. I’ll write something like him. It was in both his careers. That’s basically how he approached it, I think. So we have an expression. I don’t know if you have it. We certainly do over here about cricketers, that the gentlemen and amateurs. People who are just get on with it and are very good at doing something, but don’t inverted commas make a career or great fuss about, and they just do it. And he was really like that, but unfortunately, when the pressure came on, he just went. He said somewhere that other people, when they face reversals, it makes them more determined to get through it. He said, with me, I’m not very good with that. I just go into my shell and he’d take to his house with a few bottles and wouldn’t be seen. Anyway, we shouldn’t concentrate on that, should we?

Sarah Harrison  18:28

It’s reminding me, Carolyn, yet again of another author we just read, Craig Rice, who another very. What’s with these funny authors? Another very funny author who, by the end of her life, was an alcoholic, had no money.

Carolyn Daughters  18:48

It’s probably not any big mystery that a lot of very funny people have had very troubled backgrounds and lives. I mean, there’s a reason they have found humor in so much of the world. Is it’s a safety mechanism. It’s a manner of escape. It’s a manner. It’s a way that they come at the world. I don’t know. I mean, that’s how I saw Craig Rice for sure, but I think that’s very obviously simplistic. And please, listeners, feel free to write me about how simplistic it was because I do realize that was very dime store psychoanalysis. But like the humor is coming from somewhere with a lot of people who are very funny, and I always think it’s interesting to find out where the humor is coming from.

Sarah Harrison  19:50

There’s not that many funny mystery writers.

Carolyn Daughters  19:54

I don’t know that that’s true either, though.

Sarah Harrison  19:57

I don’t think it’s known as a funny genre.

Carolyn Daughters  20:00

I don’t know that it’s known as a funny genre either necessarily, but C. W. Grafton, The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, was extremely funny. His daughter Sue Grafton, I think, has a strain of humor through a lot of the books that she writes. There are quite a few authors that really integrate humor. I mean, into their books. Not every author, and certainly like of the caliber writer that we’re looking at, I’m not shocked to see humor integrated in. And Edmund Crispin was just so. I use the analogy to or the comparison to Monty Python in the last episode, but like really, really erudite. Like I mean, Robert Bruce Montgomery, smart, smart, highly educated man, great writer writing this madcap farce to some degree. It felt farcical, and it reminded me of the sort of thing that the incredibly talented Monty Python crew would do.

David Whittle  21:18

Well, we said in the previous episode about his final book novel, the one he wrote after 23 years or whatever it was after his previous, which I said glimpses of the moon is just a comic novel basically with a little bit of detection thrown in. And when I first read that, all I knew about him was that he died two years after it was published, or was it a year after it was published?

Sarah Harrison  21:43

Oh, you know.

David Whittle  21:45

I just had this idea from reading it. Somebody knew was on the way out and was just hurling insults at it right, left, and center. I mean, he was he had this say big bungalow built, and he had a running with a local electric electricity board about because it was in quite a rural setting, getting electricity supply to it, and he so it was the South West Electricity Board, which was known as SWEB, of course, and so one of the villains. Well, not he’s not a villain, but well, he’s just he ends up as a burglar. Is the man from Sweb, and he and you can real when you got to when I got to know more about his life. Of course, I realized he was just getting his own back on this company. That because I think somewhere says I knew I knew he wasn’t a proper because he turns out he actually isn’t an employee of Sweb, and somebody says, well, I knew he wasn’t he wasn’t nasty enough for a start, or something like this. So he just feared he was having a go at everybody and everything. Although, then again, you look into it and realize he’d spent about 20 years trying to write this book through various other things and illnesses and goodness knows what else. Because the only well, he always said he only married in his last year, or I think he got married in 76, to his secretary basically was his nurse as well, really latterly, and I think it’s pretty well obvious that if it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t have finished that either. I think she made sure he did, but Yes, so, but I say you think there’s somebody who clearly was on the way out, but writing this completely. If you think The Moving Toyshop is far, so wait till you get glimpses of the moon because it’s even more ridiculous. As I said, I rather like it, but the purists a bit sniffy about it, but I’m not at all. I think it’s wonderful.

Carolyn Daughters  23:45

Oh, interesting. Why are the purists a bit sniffy about it? What’s going on there?

David Whittle  23:50

Because of the detection is distinctly rabbit out of a hat stuff. And again, if The Moving Toyshop plot is plausible rather than anything else, I mean, glimpse of the moon. I mean, in a sense, it’s. I think one critic did say, and I quite agree that whatever people may said or we’re disappointed about, whatever. But actually, one or two said, well, it’s a logical extension of what he was writing before. He’s just up the farce, really, and to a sense, not up the detection, but it’s just apt was ever thus, really. But it’s, but certainly, if you want a bit of a love, I mean, that’s the one to go for, I think.

Sarah Harrison  24:34

Nice. Well, David, what first drew you to Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), and how did you become his biographer?

David Whittle  24:42

Well, this is a strange talk about a strange conversation. I had a very good colleague at Leicester Grammar School where I taught, who was actually well nominally a classicist, but he was he’d been a choral scholar at Cambridge and was very keen amber. A musician, and I use amateur in the best sense. There, he was very, very, very able and composer as well. But he liked detective fiction. And one break time, one morning, we were just sitting in the coma room at the school, just chatting about this, that, and the other, as we often did. And of course, and he said, “Well, he said, “Have you have you read in the Edmund Christ? I said, “Well, no, I haven’t. And then he said, “Well, he wrote music under the name Robert Bruce Montgomery. Of course, the minute he said that, I realized I knew that name from films because even in the 50s and that they tended to have the credits at the beginning in a lot of films. So you’d see who wrote the music, even if I wasn’t going to watch the film. I usually watch the bit that said, wrote the music because there’s some very fine composers have written film music, and so it just went from there. And I’d always fancied writing about, this colleague of mine, what he didn’t know about British 20th century music wasn’t worth knowing, and so it went from there. This just this chance conversation, and I just looked into the fact because I knew obviously he was dead by then. His widow had died not long, and this would be about 1990, would it be when I this conversation took place? And I think his widow had died not long before. And I remember I just I wrote to I forget who it was. Somebody in the  you start tracing this, and you can’t remember how the bits stuck together. But bit by bit, I found out nobody else seemed to be doing it, and it was an interesting character. And one or two, there’s an English composer called Geoffrey Bush, who was a great chum of his, and he was one of the first people I wrote to, and he said, “You must do it. And he was very enthusiastic. I was very sad he didn’t live to see the production. And at that time, when I started, Andrew Motion was writing the bargain for Philip Larkin. He was one of his executors, and so I wrote to him, and I had a went and saw him, and we had a chat, and what not. And it all just bit by bit on it went..

Carolyn Daughters  27:11

I was going to ask about Edmund Crispin’s friendship with Philip Larkin and with John Dickson Carr. He had these probably intellectual relationships and also friendships with some of these people. To what degree did he potentially influence them, or did they influence him? I mean, for example, The Moving Toyshop is dedicated to Philip Larkin.

David Whittle  27:41

Yes, and we said in the previous episode pretty much how that came about because Philip Larkin inadvertently, a bit like my friend inadvertently giving me the idea of writing the biography of Robert Bruce Montgomery. Larkin inadvertently gave Crispin the idea for the shop front in The Moving Toyshop. But well, when they met in Oxford at Oxford, Larkin and Ames were a bit cowed initially by Bruce Montgomery because he seemed so well informed about everything, and up with all as we were talking about with the latest developments in music, the latest composers and what not, and because they said as well as we went down the pub, he stomped his way to the Randolph Hotel to drink spirits. Went before they knew each other very well, so they were a bit in awe of him because. I mean, he had three sisters, but they were quite a lot older than him, so it wasn’t exactly on the bottom end of being an only child in the same. But there was this age difference. So and because of his also mentioned, didn’t we in the last one about his he was born with this these feet this foot problem, not close foot. The fact that his feet had to be pulled out in these operations, so he spent a lot of time on his own in hospital or whatever, and I think he just made the most of it reading and  listening to music, and of course he was very well informed when he got to Oxford, and but of course, bit by bit, they discovered he wasn’t at all impressed. Well, he was impressive, but not to put them off. And they obviously got on with him very well. But I, I don’t know whether the influence seemed. I mean, Kingsley Amis was tended to be quite rude about his books most of the time. Well, Philip Larkin could make slightly cutting remarks as well because so could Edmund Crispin himself would say, “Oh, it’s my late, whatever. But I think what shows the difference between the people they were, well, not Larkin so much, but was when Robert Bruce Montgomery. He was chief crime reviewer for the Sunday Times. Kings and Davis wrote his first. He made an attempt at a crime novel. I think was it called the Riverside Villa Murders or something like that. Anyway, whatever it was, and it was sent to obviously the Sunday Times for a review, and Robert Bruce Montgomery got it, and of course he didn’t think much of it, so he sent it back to the literary editor, saying, “Look, could you get somebody else to do it because he’s an old friend, and I don’t actually write what I think about it. Oh no! And you could think he was clearly a very decent chap because I bet if it was the boot was on the other foot. Amos wouldn’t have, I suspected, worried about putting the boot in, because he was that sort of character. So I think he was. He was a very generous. There’s a lot of authors actually. When he was, people like P.D. James, Ruth Ren, and he was the first to give them a bump up, and P.D. James wrote him a letter saying, well, thank you very much because it means a lot for somebody like you to because it was her first novel, and of course it was typical of him because he wrote back saying, well, well, you can thank me if you like, he said, but it’s I’ve only written good things about it because it’s a good box, and the praise is all due to you. This sort of thing, and Colin Dexter was another one that he wrote about. So he did help a lot of, well, what we think of as young writers at the time. They’ve now all gone on. But of course he did. He did mention, I think, before he did these anthologies of science fiction and stories for Faber. He was a very good anthologist, I think.

David Whittle  31:49

And Brian Oldys, the science fiction writer, did say to me that the introductions he did to those collections of science fiction were very important in setting literary standards. When he said the genre was at a very low ebb in the 50s, he said he did a lot. I don’t know. I must say it was the one area of Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery) stuff I wasn’t as well informed initially. But it’s not a genre I much care for, but he said that these were very important.

David Whittle  32:27

His stock was very high, Edmund Crispin’s at the time, so as a writer, so of course his anthologies were sought after. He did a lot of that stuff, even when he, I suppose, reading is something you can do when you don’t feel like going out or whatever, which 50s increasingly he didn’t. So because he’d always enjoyed mixing with big names. He loved The Detection Club, with Dorothy L. Sayers and people like that. Oh yes, they’d sit around. He loved that, and so, but  so he was always going up to London, things like that. But latterly, he didn’t. And what I call subsequent his querulous years when he was unfortunately drinking and he hardly ever left Devon. He resigned from all his everything. He thought the Crime Writers Association was becoming a thriller writers’ club, the musicians’ union. He resigned from composers’ guild. Everything except the detection club. That was the one thing he always enjoyed, because he liked mixing with other well-known writers. I suppose he was quite good at that sort of thing.

Carolyn Daughters  33:40

Yes, David. What I wouldn’t do to be part of that club in its heyday, I would be like the person crashing. I would I would be the I would be the waitress serving. I mean, I would do anything to be in that room.

David Whittle  33:52

Well, yes, there’s somewhere where it’s Dorothy L. Sayers in a letter to him said something like, “Let’s get the business of the meeting out the way, and then we can sit around discussing corpses and clues.

Sarah Harrison  34:02

Oh, amazing!

David Whittle  34:04

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  34:06

Amazing, David. Your remarks about how his friends would make cutting remarks actually reminded me a lot of The Moving Toyshop. One of the weirdest parts of the book for me at the beginning. I’ll just read it real. As soon as Cadogan gets to Oxford, for some reason he goes into Gervase Fen’s office. I wasn’t entirely sure why. And then Gervase Fen recognizes him, and he says, “Have I ever said an unkind word? And Cadogan said, “It was you who wrote about the first poems I ever published. This is a book everyone can afford to be without. Ha! Said Fen, pleased. Very pithy I was in those days. Is this part of the culture to just make rude remarks to your friends and colleagues, or

David Whittle  34:54

I have to say that Philip Larkin. There’s quite a few references to him, so. That Robert Bruce Montgomery had shown his poems, and he had made suggestion. No, no, I think, as I’ve said, I think Hope made clear that Montgomery was actually not the sort of person who would cut things to pieces. But he did make one or two suggestions, and Larkin says yes, and he was right. He did clearly take notice. I think Philip Larkin and Montgomery talk more about their writing than Ames did with well, certainly with Montgomery. I don’t know what he did with Philip Larkin, but so and particularly I say that period when during the war when they neither was called up because of their various disabilities, as it were, and they were living fairly close together in Shropshire. So they did, I think, talk quite a lot about things then. And there are quite a few references in letters and things to the fact that well, Bruce had suggested this. Actually, on this CD we’re doing a few songs. There are a couple of two or three settings of Philip Larkin’s poetry, than to actually he composed. So they were they were pretty close at that time.

Sarah Harrison  36:10

That’s great. I wanted to ask you too. I hear your clock going in the background.

David Whittle  36:20

That’ll add some ambiance to the recording.

Carolyn Daughters  36:23

This is to tell everybody that it is like I don’t know. We’re going on midnight or whatever. David’s time here.

Sarah Harrison  36:30

David, where are you located?

Carolyn Daughters  36:32

Actually, it’s only 11. Sorry, it’s only 11 o’clock.

David Whittle  36:35

It is only 11.

Carolyn Daughters  36:37

Yes. Yes.

Sarah Harrison  36:38

Where are you calling from, by the way?

David Whittle  36:41

I’m in a small town called Oak. There’s the other one going there. Small town in Oak called Oakham, right? Pretty much central in England, so an hour from the east coast or something.

Sarah Harrison  36:54

Nice. Well, I wanted to ask you since you said in the last episode you did go to Oxford to do a lot of your research, so you’ve seen a lot of the modern Oxford that is referenced in The Moving Toyshop, and I have this seed of a baby idea in my mind of one day doing like a Tea, Tonic, and Toxin mystery tour, where we go to these places in the books, Oxford would have to be one of them. Of course, would we recognize it today? By Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery) really describes it a lot. He’s drawing maps. Would we recognize it at all? What would we recognize?

David Whittle  37:35

I think you would recognize most of it because the center. I mean, I haven’t been so much recently because it’s not that far from me. About an hour and a half in the car as well, bit more. But the center, because of all the colleges and that, essentially hasn’t changed. I suppose residents there would claim it would have, but the essential geography is still very much there. And of course, the colleges which front onto a lot of the main streets in the middle that he mentions. Of course, I mean St Christopher’s doesn’t exist as such. The college that Gervase Fen is professor at, but the actual buildings that he. I was just as I said to you earlier, rereading it today, I thought I’d better do another second time in a fortnight, which is unlike me. But I suddenly realized he was talking about this passage that one of the ways when I used to do the research was you could get these schoolmaster study periods, and so you could go if you had some research doing Oxford in the summer holidays, you could take a room in, and I was in St John’s, his college, and these descriptions in The Moving Toyshop of when No, what’s his name’s on his bike during the chase at the end. He goes down this very passage that I used to walk down to get to get into the St John’s where my room was. So, yes, I think you would. Well, if you ever did want to do one over in Oxford, I could find all sorts of people who would talk about different writings.

Sarah Harrison  39:10

Carolyn, we got to make this happen.

Carolyn Daughters  39:14

The Moving Toyshop walking tour.

David Whittle  39:17

Well, yes, but I’m saying.

Carolyn Daughters  39:19

No, no, no, running tour. You can’t walk this. You have to drive part of it. Biking tour, biking, and then crazy, crazy driving, and then you’ve got to run part of it. There’s no walking. That would be crazy. If you get tired, you go into a pub.

David Whittle  39:35

Well, indeed, and there’s plenty of those, and some of the ones that he, the burdened baby, which he mentions, which is the Eagle and Charles. I think it did close, but I think it’s open again. I was reading the other day. But of course, there’s all sorts of other writers, as set them in Oxford, so you could have quite a time. Exactly, exactly.

Carolyn Daughters  39:55

We need the Gaudy Night tour as well.

Sarah Harrison  40:00

Okay. Yes. You just you just made me grow my idea even more. Thank you, David.

David Whittle  40:09

Yes, and there’s plenty of people over here who’ll be experts on whichever writers you want to.

Sarah Harrison  40:13

Oh, wonderful!

David Whittle  40:14

I’m sure would do it, David.

Carolyn Daughters  40:17

When we come when we’re coming into town, we’re going to reach out to you because I know you want to stay in your town. You mentioned okay, I like this provincial living, but we may ask you to come into London. I don’t know.

David Whittle  40:32

I was in London last week, so I do get out. Sometimes I’m quite happy to get home.

Carolyn Daughters  40:39

Yes.

David Whittle  40:43

Right. Sorry. Anyway, we ought to talk about Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), I suppose.

Carolyn Daughters  40:48

What? Talk about Edmund Crispin? I guess so.

Sarah Harrison  40:50

David, you’re a musician as well, right? How does how does that connection, does it help you relate to his work, or is it just coincidental?

David Whittle  41:03

It’s coincidental, but of course, it did make, as I said earlier, him a great character for me to write about because, being a composer, that the music side, obviously, and the fact that I’m keen on crime fiction, so there, I think, we start my talks, by about him saying, I can safely say he’s the only crime fiction writer who also wrote music for the Carry On films, or whatever, or film music. There’s not many people who’ve done both. I mean, Anthony Burgess, he was a keen composer as well as an author.

Sarah Harrison  41:38

Oh, I did not know that. I did not know he was.

David Whittle  41:40

He wrote a lot of music. He wrote a lot of music, and they had a conversation once, I think, at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and they came up with this idea. They’d write an opera together for television, based on the Eve of St Agnes, and of course it never came to anything like most. But alas, but I think the idea was that Burgess would write the libretto, Robert Bruce Montgomery would do the music. But I thought, I wonder how they’d stop interfering with the other one. I think Burgess was a very different character. So Bruce Montgomery, but no, there aren’t many people who’ve written music and detective fiction, so he’s pretty weak on that swool. Although there is one of the short stories in is it Gervase Fen Country, I think, but Who Killed Baker? I mentioned Geoffrey Bush earlier, and there was an English composer who was the one who was very enthusiastic about me writing the biography, and he was a very keen crime fiction reader, and he came up with the plot for that story, and Mon Gonrit or Crispin wrote it up, and it does say that at the top of the at the top of the story it says by Geoffrey Bush and Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery), but yes, Geoffrey Bush himself didn’t actually write Need Crime. I think, other than providing the plot. He’s unique in that sense. So, of course, that’s for my interests. What I’ve been working quite a lot on is trying to get his music better and known. His sorry, his concert music. Obviously, his film music gets played, as it does if the film’s shown, but hence this recording we’re doing. And I got something on the BBC. I persuaded them to do something a couple of years ago. Which I think I sent you, didn’t I?

Sarah Harrison  43:33

Oh, terrific!

David Whittle  43:34

Yes. Things like that. There’s work to be done on that side. I think as a crime writer, yes, he’s pretty well known, and they’re still in print, and probably they probably have been out of print briefly, but Harper Collins do them now. So they’re very available, as the music isn’t in the same way. So I’ve been concentrating probably more on that, I suppose.

Sarah Harrison  44:03

That’s awesome. I wanted to ask you as well. We talked about how he doesn’t reuse his characters very much. Like Gervase Fen is really the only constant. Given his whole canon of work, does Fin actually develop over the books, or is he always just the same? Do we? Does he grow? He’s always about the same.

David Whittle  44:31

I was just rereading the reviews of some books the other day. One reviewer says at one point, I used to complain that Gervase Fen was too eccentric. He says, and now he’s toned down a bit. I’m a bit sorry I ever said that. I think we talked, didn’t we? I can’t remember because in the last episode of this one, that the idea of Carr. Actors in detective fiction or Croghan, I think, developing over the series. Just I mean, it just I mean you’re thinking does Poirot really develop as a character? He’s much the same, isn’t he? Most of the time, and I just think it wasn’t something they tended to do then, so Fen, he seems to be pretty much the same. I was just musing the other day that in the early box, his wife and family get a bit of a mention, but thereafter they more or less are never mentioned ever again. They aren’t one of the short stories. They come in. He’s trying to. He’s very happy to get out of a children’s party that he’s had to put up with, but that’s about the only time they just don’t get a mention. You know his wife and children. We know he’s got them from the first book, but I’m not sure they’re ever heard of again. Not certainly not to any extent.

Carolyn Daughters  45:56

Oh, interesting.

Sarah Harrison  45:59

Are all the short stories Gervase Fen stories as well, or are there other disconnected ones?

David Whittle  46:04

Most of them Gervase Fen appears in, and Humblebee, this Scotland Yard detective, he is more. I think I think he’s only in two of the novels, but he appears in quite a lot of the short stories. But there are some that don’t have yes any Fen or Humblebe or anybody, and they are completely different. But I think the majority have got Gervase Fen as a character.

Carolyn Daughters  46:31

I think, for me, like the comic elements of The Moving Toyshop of Edmund Crispin’s writing are so interesting because Robert Bruce Montgomery really embraces it. He just goes he goes full force and a purist may say okay the actual mystery element is perhaps missing or if not missing, isn’t highlighted the way that I would expect a mystery to be highlighted, and to some degree, we talked about this in our last episode, which everyone should listen to.

Carolyn Daughters  47:15

Yes, that’s true. I mean that may well be true, and yet the journey is so fun. I just felt like there were points where I felt like the farce or the like the comic element almost overtook the story, and then something would rein it back a little bit, which I thought was actually very useful because otherwise I would have just been in. Okay, this is a forest. Everything is silly. It doesn’t matter, but it’s just going to be a funny ride. But there were certain characters, for example, Miss Snaith, who has the strangest inheritance strategy or plan I’ve read in a long time. Sally Carstairs, who I really, really liked. There’s the dead body at the beginning of the story, and there’s also Sally Carstairs’ dog is killed, and I strangely felt for that dog as well because I knew that Sally did, and I really started to become connected to Sally as a character, I think it’s really interesting that Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery) was able to do this in his book. That he was able to like bring us out of the farce and back to reality periodically because it’s easy to get caught up into okay we’re doing another chase. They’re hiding in another room. But there were certain elements that periodically I felt like grounded us and sort of stabilized from my perspective, and I thought that was really interesting and smart that he did that. I mean, how did how did you both feel about how this book felt as a book and why it still resonates after 80 years of publication?

David Whittle  49:11

Well, can I just say something else quickly first before that? Are you mentioning the dog? Because animals do not fare well in. his book. Okay, actually, on the back of the old penguin, which is the one I’ve been reading, it does say his recreations are swimming, excessive smoking, Shakespeare, the operas of Wagner and Strauss, idleness and cats. His antipathies are dogs and various other things, and poor old dog, as we know, meets its maker in this. In is it the next book, The Love Lives Bleeding? I’m trying to remember which order they’re in. Another dog meets his maker in a later book, Buried for Pleasure. There’s what’s called the non-doing pig. It’s called the non-doing pig because it never grows, despite how much it eats, and that gets buried in the rubble of a house explosion. And so the animals do not feature very well, particularly dogs. There were cats,. Well, I think to answer the question, sorry, as I’ve said, a lot of people think it’s his best novel, and sure, they’re period pieces. They are what they are. Although I said they’re almost period pieces from an earlier period, but because his writing was quite nostalgic. But I suppose it is this the fascination of this idea of a toyshop that next morning isn’t a toyshop, it’s moved somewhere else, and in fact it has moved, hasn’t it? Because it does, they find it somewhere else. So the basic premise of it, and you said this, I think, in the previous episode is quite attractive. Why does this toyshop actually move from A to B overnight?

Carolyn Daughters  51:05

We also talked about The Ministry of Fear, Graham Greene. But we in both these books we have a protagonist that is swept into this bizarre adventure, dangerous scenarios that feel dreamlike. They feel improbable. They feel like absurd at times. Very different books, obviously. Very different books. The Ministry of Fear and The Moving Toyshop. But I wonder, like, because it is a hearkening back and does feel a little bit old school. If it also feels modern in that absurdist way.

David Whittle  51:48

This is getting very deep.

Carolyn Daughters  51:50

Oh, David, we are so deep in this podcast. I can’t even begin. I can’t.

David Whittle  51:57

I’ve never thought too deeply about this. I can tell you, but I don’t know. I just think it’s a basic premise. It’s quite an attractive one, and as we’ve been saying, the characters carry it along to a certain extent with the plot as well. But that’s where the interest is in slightly odd things that go on. But yes. Carolyn, you’re getting deep.

Sarah Harrison  52:25

You’re getting deep right at the end of the episode.

Carolyn Daughters  52:29

What? No, we can’t possibly be at the end of the episode.

David Whittle  52:32

What I haven’t told you, if we’ve got time for it quickly, is how he got both his. That was going to be my question.

Sarah Harrison  52:39

Was it?

David Whittle  52:40

What? How Robert Bruce Montgomery got his pen name, and how he came up with Gervase Fen.

Sarah Harrison  52:44

What was the last final thought you wanted to share from all your research?

David Whittle  52:49

Well, no, it was just that you know Robert Bruce Montgomery got the his name pen name Edmund Crispin because he had red hair, but the Gervase Fen business because he was a great fan of Michael Innes and of course there’s Gervase I’m going to get this wrong now if I’m not careful in Hammett Revenge I don’t know if you’ve talked about that book Michael Innes no there’s a Gervase actually isn’t it Gervase Crispin in that so he got the Crispin from there but he also had wavy red hair, and the Gervase for Fen from that book. But also, he got a Fen name from I don’t know if you sing this hymn in the States, but “Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. It’s a hymn we well known in this country, but one of the lines is it says over Moore and Fen, and Robert Bruce Montgomery’s tutor at Oxford was W. G. Moore. So that’s where he because over Moore and Fen that’s where he got the name Fen from, for Gervase Fen was purely because in a hymn it’s linked in with the name of his tutor. It’s very silly, really, but that’s where we got it from.

Carolyn Daughters  54:15

The phrase that’s sticking with me is the encircling gloom.

David Whittle  54:18

Yes, encircling gloom. Lean down me. Is it? I’m trying to remember this now.

Carolyn Daughters  54:23

Oh wow!

David Whittle  54:25

Playing the organ and not singing the words.

Sarah Harrison  54:31

Anyway, that’s excellent, Carolyn. Did you have any final questions?

Carolyn Daughters  54:35

I have like 1,000, but all right. I have my usual 1,000.

Sarah Harrison  54:40

Well, David, you tried very valiantly to get us a copy of your biography, and I don’t know what the mail is up to, but it had not arrived. I will say though, we have it available for our listeners. It’s listed in our Amazon storefront. It’s listed on our bookshop.org storefront. So if you want to want to take a deeper look at David’s work and Edmund Crispin’s (Robert Bruce Montgomery) work and his biography, you can definitely find it there. And I hope one day my copy arrives in the mail.

David Whittle  55:20

Well, I’m looking forward to it.

Carolyn Daughters  55:22

Next up, we have a really cool book that I enjoyed reading, and I also am debating with myself, so I can’t wait to start debating with Sarah and others. The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis won the 1947 Edgar Award for Best first novel. It’s an unsettling psychological mystery that combines suspense and a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness in mid-century crime fiction. When a charismatic English professor is murdered at an Ivy League women’s college, a love-struck freshman confesses, though no one believes she is guilty. So, who committed the murder? Was it simply a random killing? As the investigation unfolds, the line between sanity and madness begins to blur. Woo! It’s a good one, I have to say, and it’s a com-it’s a conversation starter, I will say.

Sarah Harrison  56:18

All right. Well, we look forward to that for our next book, and thank you so much, David, for joining us. It’s been an absolute delight learning about this author that I went in knowing nothing about.

David Whittle  56:30

It’s been my pleasure. Thank you very much for asking.

Carolyn Daughters  56:34

Yes, it has been a joy. Thank you.

Sarah Harrison

Thank you so much for joining us, David. This discussion on The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin has been delightful. And listeners, please come back for the next episode, where we get to discuss Edmund Crispin in even more detail. Please help other mystery lovers find our show by subscribing or with a like, a share, or a rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written.

Carolyn Daughters

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, Stay Mysterious.