John Dickson Carr, Alan Melville, sports – welcome to episode 116!
In the first half, we talk about sports in books – do we like them? Will we be able to think of any? Thank you to Lindsey for suggesting the topic! In the second half we compare two murder mysteries: It Walks By Night by John Dickson Carr and Quick Curtain by Alan Melville.
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The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
This Census-Taker by China Miéville
The City and the City by China Miéville
The Portrait by Willem Jan Otten
Bricks and Mortar by Helen Ashton
Hornet’s Nest by Helen Ashton
Dr Serecold by Helen Ashton
Yeoman’s Hospital by Helen Ashton
People in Cages by Helen Ashton
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman
How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup by J.L. Carr
A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
A Season in Sinji by J.L. Carr
The Silence of Colonel Bramble by Andre Maurois
A.A. Milne
P.G. Wodehouse
Rudyard Kipling
Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
St Clare’s series by Enid Blyton
Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton
The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
Double Fault by Lionel Shriver
Morse series by Colin Dexter
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
Opening Night by Ngaio Marsh
Cinderella Goes To The Morgue by Nancy Spain
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Death of Anton by Alan Melville
Weekend at Thrackley by Alan Melville
Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs
Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott
Interestingly, I would have previously said that I didn’t like books about sport. But I loved Steeple Sinderby, as well as the BLsporting mysteries collection and their release of The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, so I suspect it depends what kind of book it is… ;D
As for your two comparison books, I’ve not read Melville yet I think, but loved the JDC – he’s so melodramatic but such fun! I do have some Melville on the TBR though, so will definitely read him! As for JDC, I find his writing and characters often over the top, but I think the Gideon Fell ones are more straightforward than the Bencolins. He’s brilliant on the locked room and impossible mysteries. He only did 5 Bencolins I think whereas there are tons of Fells.
I do love a locked room mystery, and was so disappointed by the solution to this one! But will try another.
Oops, I’m backtracking a bit, but is this the episode where Kipling was said to have written the ‘play up and play the game’ poem? That was Vitai Lampada, by Sir Henry Newbolt (1897). ‘The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead–‘
Ooops, thanks Karen! It just seemed such a Kipling thing to say :D Thanks for setting us right.
A few suggestion for the listener asking for Oxford-set books:
Barbara Pym’s Crampton Hodnet is set in the 1930s, as is Robert Liddell’s The Last Enchantments (though he follows Hardy and calls it “Christminster”.
Philip Larkin wrote a wonderful novel, Jill, about a poor undergraduate trying to adapt to Oxford at the onset of World War II.
I’m thinking that since most students only pass through Oxford as young people, it’s more likely that you’ll find sections of books set there. I’m thinking particularly of the opening of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the semi-autobiographical novel A Mine of Serpents by Jocelyn Brooke.
Iris Murdoch’s The Book and the Brotherhood opens at an Oxford reunion and centers around a group of graduates in later life.
Oh yes! I have read Crampton Hodnet and I bought Jill forever ago, so both good recommendations. It has been interesting seeing Oxford as both student and non-student myself, and what a different place it seems.
It was fun listening to two non sports people talking about sport. It made me realise how much sport I have enjoyed watching from rugby to ice skating. I’ve even watched a lacrosse match on a beach in Norfolk. Sport was a big part of the books I read growing up from sailing with the Swallows & Amazons to hockey at Mallory Towers. And as a girl sport was one of the few places we were allowed to be competitive and fierce, look at the fine example of St Trinian’s lower sixth! But it also features in those gritty Northern novels that reflected my world more like Kes and The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner. Sport can unite, isolate or be an escape. One of my favourite books is The Cricket Match by Hugh de Selincourt which is about everything – love, family, loyalty, recovery, friendship, fear, hope, community – all with humour and grace. A little gem. Please do another podcast with a random theme like this, perhaps cookery or ballooning or ballroom dancing. You never know where it will take us.
Thank you for the Oxford suggestions. I’ve obtained copies of most of the suggested books that I haven’t already read. As always, I enjoyed the episode.
Excellent, enjoy!