Flesh and Blood, by Stephen McGann

Yesterday, I think I signed off on one of the five books I've been working on simultaneously. Work continues on the others - next week, I hope to go dig through a box of paperwork about David Whitaker that has newly come to light, in the hope I can weave it into the biography I'm well into writing up.

All this activity has meant little time for reading other than checking quotations and references. But last night I finished Flesh and Blood - A History of My Family in Seven Sicknesses by the actor Stephen McGann. He's been tracing his family history since his teens, and follows a line from the the Irish potato famine to the slums of Liverpool and then on to the present day. The Irish history is material he's already mined in the drama he produced and starred in with his three brothers, The Hanging Gale (1995), while it's easy to see how his wife Heidi Thomas has also drawn from personal experience in the series she still oversees, Call the Midwife (2012- ).

Of course, McGann plays kindly, compassionate Dr Patrick Turner in that, which means I heard a lot of the medical explanations in the book in that same warm, reassuring voice. The seven sicknesses - hunger, pestilence, exposure, trauma, breathlessness, heart problems and necrosis - are explained and contextualised in a straightforward, readily comprehensible style.

What really brings the book to life is the specific, human stories - many of which are astonishing. Stephen's great uncle, James McGann, was a fireman on the Titanic, survived the sinking and gave evidence at the enquiry that followed. As a result, his own voice is preserved in the Yorkshire Post of 23 April 1912, an eye witness to the last moments of Captain Smith.

Stephen himself witnessed the disaster at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989 - he was in attendance at the football match, along with his brother Paul. As well as his testimony of what he saw that day, I'm struck by what happened afterwards. It took hours before fans were permitted to leave the ground. And then:

"As Paul and I walked down a Sheffield backstreet, dazed by tragedy and wearing our scarves tight against the evening chill, we suddenly heard a shouted profanity above us, directed against supporters of Liverpool. Pieces of paving stone were thrown from a high balcony in our direction. Shocked out of our daze, we ran for cover." (p. 76)

There's personal tragedy, too, and lots on the mechanics and infighting when you're one of five children - which I found very easy to relate to. There's also McGann's fascination with historical documents, and the sense that going through old papers suddenly gives of your own contribution to history through the papers that bear your name. But what I especially like is how different this is from most biographies and autobiographies.

McGann tells his own and his family's history, but it's actually a history of all of us. How we live. How we sicken and die. What legacy we leave behind us.

Doctor Who Magazine #590

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features my interview with Devante Fleming, one of the floor runners currently working on Doctor Who. There's also an infographic by me and illustrated by Ben Morris showing the winners of the reader poll for best Third and Fourth Doctor stories.

Stuart Manning has also written a feature on the first and very different draft script of fan-favourite The Ark in Space, which is being released on audio in June - produced by me. It includes an interview with Jonathan Morris, who adapted the script to work in your ears.

Robert Brown has also interviewed former BBC publicist Jacqui Stonebridge about the early days of Doctor Who - a nice surprise for me as I've seen Jacqui's name on lots of old paperwork recently. And I'm dead envious of my mate Mark Wright getting to interview Dave Gibbons.

David Whitaker at 95

David Whitaker
in Australia, early 1970s

On 18 April 1928, 95 years ago today, David Arthur Whitaker was born in Knebworth.

In 1963, David became the first story editor of the new science-fiction series Doctor Who, and oversaw of 53 consecutive episodes. 

(Two of those weren't broadcast: the unbroadcast pilot was rewritten and re-rerecorded as the broadcast An Unearthly Child, and the two episodes Crisis and The Urge to Live were, after they'd been recorded, edited down into a single episode. I'm not counting the re-recording of The Dead Planet in this total because, so far as we know, the production team worked from the same script so it didn't need David's attention.)

(Also, David didn't receive credit on The Edge of Destruction or The Brink of Disaster because he was the credited writer on those. There's no story editor credited on The Powerful Enemy or Desperate Measures, either, and he may well have written these while still employed as story editor. But paperwork suggested his editorial duties concluded with the episode before that, Flashpoint, so that's where I'm stopping this count. Phew.)

David is also the credited writer on 40 episodes of Doctor Who - more than anyone else in the 1960s, the fourth most prolific TV writer of old-skool Doctor Who (after Robert Holmes on 64, Terry Nation on 56 and Malcolm Hulke on 45 if we count his co-written episodes as 0.5).

Of the 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who, David Whitaker was the credited writer on 18. (John Lucarotti was credited on 11, some co-written, Brian Hayles on 9, Ian Stuart Black on 8.)

David also wrote two of the first three Doctor Who novelisations, co-wrote two of the first three Dalek annuals, co-wrote the first Doctor Who related stage play, polished one of the two Dr. Who movies and probably wrote the bulk of the long running Daleks comic strip.

It's the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who this year, so where was David Whitaker on this day in 1963, his 35th birthday? Well, he was in (or just about to go to) New York in an effort to sell a musical he'd written, Model Girl, with composer George Posford.

Excerpt of letter from David Whitaker
to June Barry, 30 April 1963

Going round the various showbiz houses to schlep his play, he was introduced as, "David Whitaker who drinks sherry."

He returned to the UK around 14 May, presenting his fiancee June Barry with an antique phone, a gift for the flat they were in the process of agreeing to rent after their forthcoming wedding on 8 June.

June Barry in the
Daily Mirror, 3 August 1963

Yes, that's the same top (and same flat) as seen in a 1965 photo shoot of June and David conducted for TV World - the Birmingham-region version of TV Times.

David Whitaker and June Barry
at home, c. May 1965

Daily Mirror, 3 July 1963

(Doreen Spooner, the Daily Mirror's 'camera girl', who took the photo of June with the phone, had the previous month made front-page news with this extraordinary scoop, sneakily shot from the door of a pub toilet.)

David died in 1980 aged just 51. He was still working on Doctor Who. This form recently came to light, proof (at last!) that he'd been working on a novelisation of his 1967 TV serial The Evil of the Daleks.

I wrote a book about The Evil of the Daleks. Later this year, I've got a book out about another of David's Doctor Who stories, The Edge of Destruction.

You can learn more about David Whitaker in the documentary I worked on with splendid Chris Chapman and Toby Hadoke, on the Season 2 box-set released last year.

And I'm currently writing a ginormous biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, to be published by Ten Acre Films later this year. I'll end with this lovely note from David to a young Doctor Who fan in 1964...

Letter from David Whitaker
to Doctor Who fan Ian

Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, by Oliver Soden

This remarkable, detailed and insightful biography is a great joy, and in the audiobook version you get the author's impressions of various famous people. The result has been excellent company on a couple of long drives, often making me and other passengers hoot.

Coward would surely have approved the deft mix of comedy and bathos, and perhaps the stylistic flourishes, too. Some bits are related in script form (Soden's own invention, based on documented sources), and there's a final sequence in which Soden vies with (and rolls his eyes at) Coward's other biographers.

I'm especially impressed by the honesty when historical sources are clearly suggestive but we can't know for sure what went on, such as with Coward's early (sexual?) relationships with men. But what really makes this work is the clarity Soden brings. He unpicks the complexities of a whole bunch of different people who often masked their true selves. And he's good on the impact and response to events - whether that's a review, a break-up, a change in legislation. I'm particularly impressed by how vividly he conveys the war: the horror of the Blitz, the work Coward was given (and not given to do), and how that appeared to those not in the know.

Soden briefly covers the moment when, while shooting In Which We Serve (1942), Coward dressed down an actor for arriving late on set, and fired him in front of the whole crew. The story of William Hartnell's tongue-lashing by Noël Coward is also recounted by the film's assistant director Norman Spencer, who says that the role was quickly filled by assistant director Michael Anderson. Spencer expresses shock at Coward's behaviour, and I wonder how Anderson felt about what happened. He later cast Hartnell in Will Any Gentleman? (1953) -- alongside another future Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee -- and I wonder if that was partly from guilt.

(On 25 November 2009, when we recorded my Doctor Who audio story The Guardian of the Solar System, the two actors were required to read in lines as Hartnell's Doctor. Jean Marsh, who had of course worked with Hartnell, advised Niall McGregor to play him as Noël Coward. Which was more helpful than my recommendation to play him as Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss.)

Philip Streatfeild

I should also declare a small interest. Soden contacted me in 2021 about a family connection: my grandmother was the niece of Coward's (probably more than) friend Philip Streatfeild. Sadly, the original, faded photograph of Streatfeild I once found among some old family papers seems to have been mislaid; it was in a terrible state when I unearthed it. But I was able to share what my late father told me, and the result is a footnote in the book that would have delighted him - and has really pleased my mum.

From the index of Masquerade
by Oliver Soden

Soden, in turn, sent me a link to a page about Philip Streatfeild on the Dulwich College website, which includes a poignant letter written by my great-great-grandfather.

The Thirties, by Juliet Gardiner

Having found Juliet Gardiner's history of Wartime Britain hugely useful, I've been making my way through this even more enormous tome, in this case 763 pages before the acknowledgements. Annoyingly, my paperback edition does not include the extensive notes - these were originally included on the publisher's website, but that's long been consigned to history. The internet archive and me writing to the publisher all failed to turn up the notes, so I'll have to invest in a second-hand hardback. Arg.

This annoyance aside, it's another excellent history bringing so much of the past to life. Inevitably, it's not quite as enthralling as the wartime volume, as it can't match that mix of horror, oddness and human interest. I've made numerous notes on stuff that illuminates the early life of David Whitaker for the book I'm writing at the moment. But all sorts of other stuff stands out: the vivid descriptions of the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace, visible from all over London (from p. 473), or the shocking road-traffic statistics from 1934: 7,343 deaths and 231,603 injuries (p. 679). 

Doctor Who Magazine #589

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features interviews with the three directors of this year's forthcoming TV episodes, and has the results of the poll into the best First and Second Doctor adventures. The latter is the subject of my latest "Sufficient Data" infographic, illustrated as always by clever Ben Morris.

I also interviewed Moses Ogundeji, who explains what it means to be "best boy" on the new series recording at the moment. 

Beautiful Shadow - A Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Andrew Wilson

I said in reviewing Martin Edwards' The Life of Crime last month that Patricia Highsmith had been "smuggling her snails in her bra." Edwards was quoting Andrew Wilson's 2003 biography of Highsmith, which a kind friend then sent me.

It's a fascinating story of a fascinating life. Highsmith is a complex, contradictory subject - on several occasions we're given completely different accounts of her, by turns cruel or kind, quiet or outspoken, fearful or bold. There are lots of reasons not to like her - the racism, the snobbery, the meanness with money when she was so wealthy. Yet understanding her background, her relationship (or lack of it) with her mother and her various struggles and heartbreaks makes this a compelling read.

There are all kinds of odd, striking moments. As well as the snails, there's her short-lived relationship with Tabea Blumenschein,

"the 25 year-old star and producer of the lesbian avant-garde pirate adventure Madame X" (p. 366).

Highsmith and Blumenschein spent six days together in a flat in Pelham Crescent, South Kensington, in May 1978 and at one point browsed the record shops. Blumenschein told Wilson that,

"Pat bought me the Stiff Little Fingers record" (p. 367),

presumably the band's debut single "Suspect Device" (released 4 February that year), before they went to dine with Arthur Koestler. The incongruity of that is even more striking when compared to Highsmith's selection the following year for Desert Island Discs: Bach (twice), Mahler and Mozart, and George Shearing's "Lullaby of Birdland".

A number of things made me begin to suspect that Highsmith was neurodiverse, and late on in the book her friend and neighbour Vivien De Bernardi told Wilson,

"In hindsight, I think Pat could have had a form of high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome. She had a lot of typical traits. She had a terrible sense of direction ... She was hypersensitive to sound and had these communication difficulties. Most of us screen certain things, but she would spit out everything she thought. She was not aware of the nuances of conversation and she didn't realise when she had hurt other people," (p. 394).

De Bernardi said this explains why Highsmith's relationships did not last; I think that's a bit glib - and that Highsmith may also have had some kind of attachment disorder, not helped by her (lack of) relationship with her mother. But I'm struck by De Bernardi's perspective of how this neurodiversity impacted Highsmith the writer:

"Although she didn't really understand other people - she had such a strange interior world - she was a fantastic observer. She would see things that an average person would never experience," (ibid).

Wilson has much to say about the content of and responses to Highsmith's lesbian novel The Price of Salt (1952), later republished as Carol and adapted into the acclaimed film. Highsmith originally published the book under a pseudonym and even when it went out in her own name was guarded in interviews about her sexuality. Often, people who knew Highsmith speak of her attitude to women as if from an outside perspective - as if she were a man. Wilson quotes Highsmith's own cahiers (notebooks) at great length, including a passage from 1942 that is ostensibly about other women and yet surely about herself.

"The Lesbian, the classic Lesbian, never seeks her equal. She is ... the soi-disant [self-styled] male, who does not expect his match in his mate, who would rather use her as the base-on-the-earth which he can never be," (p. 48, quoting Highsmith's Cahier 8, 11/18/42, Swiss Literary Archives in Berne).

Repeatedly, Highsmith identified with her most famous fictional creation Tom Ripley, signing a copy of Ripley Under Ground for her friend Charles Latimer as "from Tom (Pat)," (p. 194, but see pp. 194-6, 199, 350 and 454 for further examples). I now want to reread The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) with all this stuff in mind - from a queer (in the sense of both "strange" and "homosexual"), autistic, trans perspective. It's a book about somebody wanting to be and transforming themselves into someone else; an act of disguise that I think, having read this biography, might be very revealing.

Doctor Who Magazine special: Showrunners

The new special edition of the official Doctor Who Magazine is devoted to showrunners and producing the series from 1963 to now. I interviewed Julie Gardiner, executive producer of the series from when it returned to TV in 2005 until 2010, and then again for the episodes that will be broadcast later this year. What a thrill!

In conversation with Fatima Manji - video

You can now watch the video of my interview with Fatima Manji about her book Hidden Heritage, conducted yesterday as part of Macfest.

It's a fascinating book. Among the many stories told, I was much taken by the fact that Abdul Karim, known as the "Munshi", taught Queen Victoria,

"to speak and write in what was then known to Britons as 'Hindustani'; essentially the Hindi and Urdu languages. She learned the Nastaliq writing system of Urdu which itself derives from Persian." (p. 137)

In 1902, her son the Duke of Connaught spoke Urdu when he welcomed dignitaries from India and elsewhere to commemorations relating to the coronation of his brother, Edward VI. As I say in the interview, my grandfather also had to learn Urdu while serving in the British Army in India in the 1930s - he apparently had three months to learn it before undergoing an exam with an Indian examiner; if he failed, he got sent home. Grandpa was then encouraged to learn a second Indian language and learned Pashto, which was of use in his time in the North West Frontier. He was still reasonably fluent in the early 1990s.

But as Manji argues,

"Victoria's enthusiasm for Urdu, her passion for art and culture of the Orient, and her defence of her friend Abdul Karim are admirable. They are under-reported inspirations in Britain's history for us to draw upon. Yet they cannot whitewash her presiding over a repressive, destructive colonial empire. Ultimately it is the structural, and not the personal, that determined the fate of the millions she ruled." (p. 151)

I'm also struck by the story of two Indian brothers fighting on opposing sides in the First World War: Mir Dast was awarded the Victoria Cross by the British; Mir Mast was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans. Oh, and Manji also speaks to my friend Vinay Patel about his 2018 Doctor Who episode Demons of the Punjab (p. 111).

Doctor Who Magazine #588

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine boasts a 28-page retrospective on The Sarah Jane Adventures which are now back up on the BBC's iPlayer. 

The 'Sufficient Data' infographic I've written, illustrated by clever Ben Morris, looks at what Sarah endured in her time travelling with the Doctor. "I must be mad," I thought as I tried to work out if Skaro and Voga qualify as cold and/or wet.

In conversation with Fatima Manji

On Saturday 11 March, I'll be in conversation with award-winning author and broadcaster Fatima Manji about her book Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain's relationship with the Orient, as part of Macfest. 

This free event takes place online from 2 to 3.30 pm. For more details and to book tickets, see the Eventbrite listing for Hidden Heritage: A Fresh Persective. Blurb as follows: 

Fatima Manji will be exploring and answering some of the following questions: Why was there a Turkish mosque adorning Britain’s most famous botanic garden in the eighteenth century? How did a pair of Persian-inscribed cannons end up in rural Wales? And who is the Moroccan man depicted in a long-forgotten portrait hanging in a west London stately home?

Throughout Britain’s museums, civic buildings and stately homes, relics can be found that reveal the diversity of pre-twentieth-century Britain and expose the misconceptions around modern immigration narratives.

In her journey across Britain exploring cultural landmarks, Fatima Manji searches for a richer and more honest story of a nation struggling with identity and the legacy of the empire.

‘A timely, brilliant and very brave book’ Jerry Brotton, author of This Orient Isle.

 

In conversation with Aamina Ahmad and Eli Lee

Last week I hosted an event for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain with the last two winners of our Best First Novel Award - Aamina Ahmad for The Return of Faraz Ali (Sceptre, 2022) and Eli Lee for A Strange and Brilliant Light (Quercus, 2021). You can see the full thing here:

Sirens of Audio #145

The latest Sirens of Audio video podcast features me being grilled about my 2012 Doctor Who audio story The Anachronauts, which starred Jean Marsh and Peter Purves, and was directed by Ken Bentley. 

What did the story owe to Tom Baker? Why did we need to worry about the Emmys? What was I even thinking? All this and more will be revealed...

You can buy Doctor Who and the Anachronauts from Big Finish.

Radio Free Skaro #893

On Saturday, I spoke to Steven and Chris from Radio Free Skaro about my research into the life of David Whitaker. I'd just given my talk on Whitaker at the Gallifrey convention, and you might be able to detect the buzz of adrenaline.

NB that Radio Free Skaro recorded lots at the convention, including an insightful interview with Chris Chibnall that they'll share next week!

Vworp Vworp! #5

I've had a brilliant long weekend in Los Angeles as a guest at the Gallifrey One convention, catching up with lots of old pals, meeting people for the first time in person who I've corresponded or worked with for ages, and making lots of new friends. It's an extraordinary, engaging and friendly event, hard to describe to anyone who's not been there. So, moving on...

Waiting for me at home was issue 5 of the excellent fanzine Vworp Vworp!, which includes my short piece, "Dalek December" on the 1965-66 stage play The Curse of the Daleks written by David Whitaker and Terry Nation, the focus being on whether it was any good. There are lots of other Whitaker-related goodies, not by me - and I gasped at the colourised photo.

I've now got to get back to writing my forthcoming biography of Whitaker, and a bunch of other stuff. Tomorrow I'm interviewing Eli Lee and Aamina Ahmad, the last two winners of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain's Best First Novel award. It's a free event, you just need to sign up.

The Morbid Age, by Richard Overy

Subtitled "Britain and the Crisis of Civilisation, 1919-1939", this is a dense and detailed history of the interwar period focused largely on its big ideas - capitalism, fascism and socialism, eugenics, psychoanalysis, pacifism etc. Overy's argument is that,

"Ideas do not operate in a social vacuum. Much of what follows explores the many ways in which ideas were communicated and how extensively, socially and geographically. The discourse did not remain the preserve of an isolated cultural elite but flourished in the first real age of mass communication." (p. 5)

He lists the uptake of radio licenses, the sales of cheap paperbacks, the wide variety of lectures and summer schools, even the instructional films on frank subjects (ie sex). 

"British society had a thirst for knowledge and a mania for voluntary associations willing to supply it. The state played a part in this process by developing more sophisticated statistical measurement and applying this to areas of policy or by identifying areas of key public concern which the government could review. The government enquiries on the trade in arms, on sterilisation policy, mental defect, population development and the depressed areas supplied ammunition for the public debates on social degeneration, economic crisis and war." (p. 375)

Historical incidents are used to show how people took or shifted positions. There's nothing on the "Spanish" flu and little on the Wall Street Crash, presumably because they didn't challenge people's previously held views. But there's lots on how the Spanish Civil War challenged the large and well-organised pacifist cause. For example, Overy quotes Julian Bell, nephew of Virginia Woolf, in a letter from 1937 to EM Forster as Bell made his way to fight - and die - in Spain:

"At this moment, to be anti-war means to submit to fascism [and] to be anti-fascist means to be prepared for war." (p. 339, in a section quoting from PN Furbank's EM Forster: A Life (London, 1977), pp. 223-4, and Mepham's Virginia Woolf, pp. 168-9.)

Overy details the impact that this and Bell's death had on this literary circle, many of whom initially held to their prior anti-war convictions. This then dovetails with the Prime Minister's efforts to avoid conflict with Hitler, and the gradual shift in public attitudes in the lead up to the Second World War.

"The most remarkable convert was the pacifist philosopher Cyril Joad, whose absolute renunciation of war was reiterated publicly right up to its outbreak and beyond. After wrestling with his convictions for some months in 1940 he experienced a dramatic change of heart. Writing in the Evening Standard in August 1940 under the headline 'I Was a Life-long Pacifist, but Hitler Changed my Mind', Joad explained that the things he valued about England - 'the free mind and the compassionate heart, the love of truth ... of respect for human personality' - were absolutely endangered by a Hitler victory which would usher in a Dark Age." (p. 352)

[Note to self: this is, broadly, the same kind of shift embodied in Alydon the Thal in the first Doctor Who story to feature the Daleks.]

What really struck me is the fatalism in all this: the widespread sense that while it might have been necessary to go to war with Hitler, such conflict would more likely end than save civilisation. That sentiment, I think, haunts The Lord of the Rings (I've been listened to the BBC radio version recently, more of which anon). It adds something to what I've been told about my grandparents' hastily arranged weddings (in September 1939 and 1940 respectively). It permeates into the book I'm writing now on David Whitaker, and his fatalistic view that history cannot be changed and we are simply swept along in its course. Yes, an idea to shift the ground beneath me.

Overy opens the book with the recollection of a telling conversation with the historian Eric Hobsbawm in which,

"he told me that he could remember a day in Cambridge in early 1939 when he and some friends discussed their sudden realization that very soon they might all of them be dead. This did strike me as surprising, and it runs against the drift of the [Hobsbawm] memoirs, in which he argued that communists were less infected by pessimism than everyone else because of their own confidence in the future." (p. xiii)

Even the faithful shared - if just on one day - that sense of foreboding. But then they were swept on.

The Life of Crime, by Martin Edwards

This massive history of crime fiction and its creators, from William Godwin to PD James, is brilliant, rich and absorbing. It's especially clever to not spoil any of the many, many great-sounding mysteries, effectively adding a thousand new volumes to the things I'm eager to read. Chapters group stories by theme, making insightful connections while also telling the history of the genre more or less in chronological order. 

Along the way, it's packed with extraordinary real life. How amazing to learn, for example, that Patricia Highsmith, whose Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1983) I so admire, had a passion for snails.

"After leaving England, Highsmith moved to continental Europe, but crossing international borders with her pets presented a serious challenge. She rose to it, as she explained to her American editor, by smuggling her snails in her bra, six to ten a breast, he reported: 'That just wasn't on the one trip - no, she kept going back and forth ... And she wasn't joking - she was very serious.'" (p. 411, editor Larry Ashmead quoted from Andrew Wilson's biography, Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith (2009))

Or there's the six well-known crime writers - Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, Hugh Walpole, EC Bentley and Father Ronald Knox - who wrote an episode each of Behind the Screen for BBC Radio in 1930, the audience at home challenged to solve the mystery as it unfolded over six instalments, aided by each episode also being published in The Listener the same week as broadcast. However, Walpole, responsible for writing and reading the first episode, wanted to be spontaneous and insisted on reading from notes. 

"So Hilda Matheson, in charge of the [BBC] Talks Department, arranged for two parliamentary reporters to take down his words [during the Saturday-evening broadcast], and type them up on the Sunday morning, so that she or [producer Howard] Marshall could check the transcript that afternoon, and post the corrected version to the printers so that they had it at half past seven on Monday morning. Even then, publication of The Listener was delayed." (p. 260)

Hooray for Hansard, and for quick, efficient postal service even on a Sunday night!

Then there's Val Gielgud, BBC director and brother of John, whose,

"exotic lifestyle - he married five times, and often wore a cloak and carried a sword-cane - was certainly a gift for the gossip columnists." (p. 261)

What an image! This was in the 1930s; Edwards is talking about Gielgud's radio version of Rope and his collaboration, with BBC colleague Eric Maschwitz, on Death at Broadcasting House (1934). But it conjured in my head a vision more like the '60s, all Avengers and Adam Adamant. And that's what this book is so often about - writers and contributors who pushed the genre forward, who were ahead of their time.

The serious and thorough history is peppered with this odd, enthralling stuff, but Edwards also has a wry line in humour, such as describing the premiere at Carnegie Hall on 10 April 1927 of Ballet Mecanique by George Antheil. 

"Unfortunately, everything that could go wrong on the night did go wrong. There weren't even any riots." (p. 200)

His enthusiasm is also infectious, such as his wholly understandable awe in describing the novel The Living and the Dead (1994) by Awasaka Tsumao, a pseudonym of illusionist Masao Atsukawa. The book was published with its signatures uncut so that only 24 of the 215 pages could initially be read - basically every eighth verso and recto, if I've got my sums right. The title page then gives instructions on,

"HOW TO READ THIS BOOK: First of all, please read the book with the sealed binding. You'll read a short story. Next, cut each page and enjoy a full-length novel. The short story has disappeared. (signed) The Author. The Disappearing Short Story." (pp. 541-2)

Edwards tells us that,

"The short story involves a small group of people at a bar, one of whom is a sad young man who seems to have psychic abilities. But when the pages are cut, that character disappears. There's at least one gender switch, the setting becomes a magic club rather than a bar, and Yogi Gandhi (who doesn't appear in the short story) is the hero. The magic only works because of the nature of the Japanese language. It would be impossible to translate while maintaining the effect. It also can only work in a print version." (p. 542, and based on the author's discussions with Steve Steinbock)

Like Edwards, I'm now haunted by this outrageously ingenious artefact, and keep turning over how it might be restaged in English. A book to haunt a writer's dreams. 

All in all, it's a fascinating and detailed history, and also a rich source of inspiration. It covers an enormous range of material and themes. If I'm being nitpicky and selfish, I'd have liked more on the overlaps between the detective story and science-fiction, if only because that's continually churning through my head - see my thread on science-fiction and Sherlock Holmes. Edwards makes four references to Isaac Asimov, whose The Caves of Steel (1954) features a robot detective, but three of these references are in end notes, only one in the main body of text. Really, I just want him to recommend me more in that vein.

And then there's the devastating statement on the fundamental paradox of genre, taken from Janwillem van de Wetering's Robert van Gulik: His Life His Work (1987)...

"The true artist yearns to grow and move forward. The general public has an insatiable appetite for more of the same." (p. 500)

More:

• My Sherlock Holmes novel, The Great War
• My locked-room Doctor Who stories Home Truths and, er, The Locked Room

Doctor Who Magazine #587

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features another "Sufficient Data" infographic from me and Ben Morris, this time with a Valentine's Day theme.

Body Parts - Essays on Life-Writing, by Hermione Lee

Having so admired Hermione Lee's biography of Penelope Fitzgerald, I was keen to hear - and thieve from - her insights more generally on the business of writing someone else's life. This collection of essays on the subject is, like her Fitzgerald book, full of illuminating, wry observation.

How brilliant, for example, to note Angela Thirkell's "blithe lack of sexual awareness" by quoting from a scene in The Brandons (1939) in which characters at a village fete take a ride on a merry-go-round made of wooden animals:

"'I knew it was you on the ostrich,' she [Lydia] said to Delia ... 'I say, someone's on my cock.'

'It's only my cousin Hilary,' said Delia. 'He won't mind changing, will you, Hilary...'

Mr Grant, really quite glad of an excuse to dismount, offered his cock to Lydia, who immediately flung a leg over it, explaining that she had put on a frock with pleats on purpose, as she always felt sick if she rode sideways...

... 'I know that once Lydia is on her cock nothing will get her off. I came here last year ... and she had thirteen rides." (Lee, p. 180, quoting Thirkell pp. 260-2)

This is all the more extraordinary when Lee then tells us that Thirkell was the mother of Colin Macinnes, author of Absolute Beginners (1959) and other bold works exploring sexuality and decadence. As a result, the quoted passage becomes something else, indicative of the clash between mother and son.

Lee quotes juicy bits from a number of other biographies, and like her I'm drawn to what she calls the "brutal, funny and helpful" advice given by the writer Colette to actress Marguerite Moreno:

"You lose most of your expressiveness when you write... Stick in a description of the decor, the guests, even the food... And try, oh my darling, to conceal from us that it bores the shit out of you to write." (Lee, p. 117, quoting Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh - A life of Collete (1999), p. 543)

Or there's the way she explains the shock that met Ellen Glasgow in the 1930s writing stories about degeneration, extramarital love and scientific arguments against religion etc, then quotes one of Glasgow's  characters - "failed philosopher, John Fincastle" - to get a sense of the impact on the author's own career.

"Nobody could earn a livelihood in America by thinking the wrong thoughts." (Lee, p. 124, quoting Glasgow's Vein of Iron (1935), p. 38)

Body Parts is peppered with this stuff. Even the briefest reference to Jane Porter's 1803 novel Thaddeus of Warsaw (p. 125) ignited my interest, prompting additional reading and connections - and perhaps a new project to lose myself in...

But what about things I'm writing now? Two essays in this collection, "Virginia Woolf's nose" at the start and "How to End It All" at the conclusion, address the ways that accounts of a person's death are often written to cast light or reflection on the life as a whole. Imagining the subject looking back over their lives is a a conceit, imposing neatness on what can be untidy ends. In fact it's not just death: lives are often untidy and inconsistent, and Lee is good on exploring that - how to address contradictory or outlier evidence, or the way a theory about someone's life can be repeated by biographers until it takes on the authority of "fact". Lee says,

"this process of cumulative reiteration happens all the time" (p. 135)

I'm mindful of that as I write my biography of David Whitaker - and also my book on his 1964 Doctor Who story, The Edge of Destruction, where I can see such reiteration in the "facts" about early Doctor Who. I'm not sure Lee provides answers to the knotty questions that she raises about how we go about telling a story without fictionalising real life - but I think that's the point. There is plenty to think about; she directs us towards the things to worry at.

The Distant Echo, by Val McDermid

A young woman attacked and left for dead is found by four young students on their way home from a party. When she dies, suspicion falls on these four lads, and haunts them for the next 25 years...

For a long time I couldn't really stomach murder mysteries, real life too choker with its own mundane horror to take on any more. But my mum recommended this, the first to feature Karen Pirie who now has her own TV show, so I gave it a go. It's compulsive reading, full of real life and human frailty, and though I'd solved the case long before the end that only added to the mounting tension. 

In fact, lots of it is very tense. For several nights I dreamt of the simple, awful horror of a man being dropped down a well. There's lots of pain, physical and mental, that really hurts.

It's odd, given the TV series, that Karen Pirie has so little to do, even when present with evidence. She's a minor character here, not in the first half at all. I'm curious to see what happens next to make her the lead.

That one character's odd, even criminal behaviour is apparently down to him having been adopted is... well, I've read other stuff from the same period that takes a similar line. It's a bit crass. And the book concludes with a chapter in which two characters talk through all the outstanding plot threads, which isn't the most elegant way to finish what's otherwise been done so deftly.