As I posted earlier I attended this conference on Saturday at the British Library and felt very privileged to receive an invitation. Stayed the night at a Premier Inn slap bang opposite the library (and I can say that Lenny Henry is right, the beds ARE comfortable and you do get a good night's sleep) and after a full English brekkie made my way to registration.
The first item on the agenda was the discussion of the publication of The Sinking Admiral. In 1931 The Floating Admiral was written by fourteen members of the Crime Club in collaboration and now we have a further fourteen members of the Club attempting the same feat. It all sounded tremendously exciting and hardly surprising that all the pre-publication copies available at the conference bookshop sold out.
This was just the start of a totally indulgent day for all crime lovers and, particularly, those who love the Golden Age of Crime writing. We had talks on Josephine Tey with particular reference to The Man in the Queue and Brat Farrer, Stella Duffy on theatricality in Ngaio Marsh, Tony Medawar on Anthony Berkeley and a fascinating discussion between Martin Edwards, author of the Golden Age of Murder, my review here, and Rob Davies of the British Library Classic Crime Club. This last chat was of particular interest to me as I shall be chairing a discussion with these two lovely people at the Felixstowe Book Festival at the end of the month.
The final event of the day was the entire panel on stage choosing their favourite screen adaptations of Golden Age novels and a huge cheer went up from the audience when Simon Brett told us all to avoid 'like the plague' the Tommy and Tuppence series that was shown on the BBC last month. We all agreed it was dire. Another huge cheer went up when the Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson was nominated and it was clear that everyone agreed with this choice. (I posted about Miss Marple a few years ago. You may be interested to see what I had to say. Link here)
A fun day which will be repeated next year, we hope.
One of the most exciting things, for me anyway, about the day was Stella Duffy telling us that she had been asked to write a Ngaio Marsh novel working with four chapters left by the author at her death, Murder in the Morgue. For a die-hard Ngaio Marsh fan like me this was a Golden Moment and I hastily chased Stella at the end of the day and asked her to come to Felixstowe to talk about this. To my delight she agreed though it will not be published for another eighteen months. I fully intend to make a downright nuisance of myself to make sure she turns up!
My note book was filled with scribbles and names of authors, hitherto unknown to me, that I now have to check out. Oh dear, so many books, so little time...
Great day and looks as if it will be repeated next year so do keep an eye out for it if you are interested in crime, purely of the fictional variety I hasten to add.
