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Colin Dexter - Castaway

By Philip Attwell

In February this year Colin Dexter was the guest of ‘Desert Island Discs’ on BBC Radio 4. ‘Desert Island Discs’ is one of Radio 4’s long running ‘flagship’ programmes. It was originally devised and presented by the late Roy Plumbley and in recent years has been hosted by Sue Lawley. The ‘proposed celebrity castaway’ talks about their life and achievements and how they might survive whilst on the desert island. The ‘castaway’ selects their eight favourite recordings to take along and a luxury item; furthermore a book of their own choosing is allowed, along with the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Colin Dexter talked about the ‘birth’ of Morse on a wet family holiday in Wales and how the first book (LBUS) came to be published. He talked of his interest from a youngster in detective stories, especially ‘whodunits’. As a young boy, he read books featuring Sherlock Holmes and Sexton Blake and also the works of Agatha Christie and John Dickson-Carr.

Dexter talked about his childhood and parents and how they encouraged their children to do well in education. He expressed his view that the standard of education has declined and that the authorities ought to be honest about it. He admitted that neither he nor Morse would be very practicable on a desert island!

The subject of the Morse novels was talked about at length. Dexter revealed that in his first book (LBUS) all the characters, except the murderer, were first prize crossword solvers. He talked about the plot being very important and how he didn’t originally intend to write a ‘series’ of books, but that it happened at the start as one by one - an ‘accumulative’ effect.

Sue Lawley wondered if, since the television adaptations, the books tended to be more dialogue oriented, reading more like a script. Dexter replied that whilst that had not been his direct intention, it may have been the case. Sue Lawley also asked about his occasional use of fictitious characters to quote from at the start of a chapter. She cited the example of a certain Mr. D. Small, who whilst only living to the grand age of eight, managed to write many works including a dictionary! Colin Dexter agreed when Sue Lawley asked if he was picking at pretentiousness!

The question of one more Morse book came up and Dexter said he ‘may’ be ‘bullied’ into writing just one more book.

His musical choices are tabled below but comment should be made on some of the selections.

Number 1 - In Paradisum - often a favourite on ‘Desert Island Disks’.

Number 2 - Abide With Me – like Morse, Dexter’s father was a baritone and used to sing this song. It also reminded him of his first Latin translation, which was the first line of this song.

Number 3 - Etude No. 5, Opus 25 by Chopin – Dexter’s brother used to play this piece.

Number 4 - The Long and Winding Road – Dexter didn’t realise what all the fuss was about until the mid 1970s when his children began to play ‘The Beatles’.

Number 5 - The slow movement from Mozart’s clarinet concerto – this piece was played at Kenny Mc. Bain’s (the original producer of the Inspector Morse television series) memorial service.

Number 6 - The Bricklayer’s Story as narrated by Gerard Hoffnung – Hoffnung was Dexter’s German teacher at Stamford.

Number 8 - The final act from Gotterdammerung – Dexter’s favourite of the eight pieces (closely followed by Mozart).

Colin’s chosen luxury item was a pair of nail scissors (Sue Lawley ‘allowed’ him a manicure set!). For the chosen book, Dexter asked if the complete poems and classical papers of A. E. Housman could be bound together for him.