Obituary: Colin Dexter, eccentric creator of Inspector Morse

26 March 2017 - 02:00 By The Daily Telegraph, London
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Colin Dexter, like his fictional creation, was fond of puzzles and a pint.
Colin Dexter, like his fictional creation, was fond of puzzles and a pint.
Image: Getty Images

Colin Dexter, who has died at the age of 86, created the cerebral Oxford-based policeman Inspector Morse, one of the best-loved characters in English detective fiction.

In 14 novels written by Dexter - as well as in more than 30 sumptuous adaptations for British TV - Morse out-thought every murderer he encountered. However fiendish or wily the perpetrator of a crime, the ungracious inspector - mean with his money, thoughtless to his staff - was always his equal.

Morse was probably the most physically inactive fictional detective since Hercule Poirot. He disdained the rough stuff; house-to-house inquiries were punctuated by visits to the pub, and he had no time for anything so vulgar as a high-speed car chase.

In all this - as in his tastes for real ale, crossword puzzles, the classics and classical music - Morse was relentlessly old-fashioned. He was also high-principled.

He was saved from priggishness by his bluff honesty, and by his occasional crises of self-confidence - he always got his man in the end, but not without first enduring exquisite mental tortures.

There are those who doubt that Dexter's books would have achieved quite the same success were it not for the TV series that derived from them.

But the question is academic, and Dexter always acknowledged the brilliance of the TV programmes. He did, however, once complain: "I had quite a bit of success before. I had won two Silver Dagger awards, and that was why they wanted to put the stories on television. There have been some writers whose work has been put on TV, and the effect has been the opposite."

Nor was he particularly concerned by the charge that the "character" of Morse had been created more by the actor who played him, John Thaw, than by Dexter himself: "I've never worried about character study or anything like that," he said. "I want to write stories that people are interested in. The idea that I am analysing or exploring the dark abyss of the soul is silly. I stress plot. I write short chapters and keep things moving."

In fact, it was probably Dexter's choice of location that was truly inspired. The classic British detective story is informed by the device of an ordered, predictable world that is destabilised by the act of murder. Oxford - with its familiar beauty and aura of tradition and continuity - is a powerful paradigm of that world.

Dexter acknowledged as much: recalling his first book, Last Bus to Woodstock (1975), he said: "It was set in Oxford because I knew Oxford by then. If I'd gone to Rotherham, say - although I'm sure Rotherham is a splendid place - I don't think Inspector Morse would have been the success it has been."

He began Last Bus to Woodstock on a whim, while he and his family were on holiday in North Wales. The principal characters, Morse and Sergeant Lewis, were named after the banker Sir Jeremy Morse and a Mrs B Lewis, both regular and successful entrants in the crossword competitions that Dexter also entered.

The initial print run of this first novel was only 4,000 copies, and not long after the book came out his publishers wrote offering him the 120 copies they had sitting in their offices; all he would have to pay was the postage. Dexter declined, little thinking that within 25 years the price for a first edition of Last Bus to Woodstock in good condition would be about £1,000.

The son of a taxi driver, Dexter was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire, on September 29 1930. Having won a scholarship to Stamford School, he went on to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in classics. After completing his national service, he became a classics master, teaching Latin and Greek at grammar schools.

His deafness, which had been getting worse for some years, forced him to abandon his teaching career. He made the decision one day when he was teaching the Aeneid and discovered that one of his pupils had been playing a pop music station on the radio during the class. The boy had been gradually turning up the volume to see how long it would be before Dexter noticed; even at full volume, Dexter had heard nothing.

Dexter was soon offered another job, running the English and classics syllabuses for Oxford's examination board from 1966 until 1987, when he retired to concentrate on his writing.

His two Silver Dagger awards were for Service of All the Dead (1979) and The Dead of Jericho (1981); he won the Gold Dagger award for The Wench is Dead (1989) and The Way Through the Woods (1992). He also won the Cartier Diamond Dagger award for services to crime fiction in 1997, and the Sherlock Holmes award in 1999.

The TV adaptations began in 1987, and were sold to some 40 countries.

Fans of Inspector Morse were also invited to speculate about their hero's Christian name. Having learnt in Service of All the Dead that it began with an "E", they had to wait until the last sentence of Death is Now My Neighbour, published 17 years later, to discover that this stood for Endeavour. Meanwhile, bookmakers had been offering odds about the correct name, installing Ernest as the five to one favourite at the head of a list of increasingly bizarre first names in which Endeavour did not even figure.

After nearly 25 years and 13 novels featuring some 80 corpses, Dexter had tired of his hero, and in 1999, to a tremendous fanfare of publicity, he killed off Inspector Morse in his last book, The Remorseful Day; true to form, Morse did not perish in hot pursuit of a villain, but in a hospital bed, from cardiac arrest brought on by his inattention to his diabetes.

Dexter was by now a rich man, although he cared little for the things that riches could buy. His only extravagances were wine and beer and collecting first editions of AE Housman.

Once asked to describe himself, Dexter wrote: "Short, fat, bald, deaf; a lukewarm socialist; a Low Church atheist; a lover of crosswords, Wagner, cask-conditioned beer and the scholar-poet AE Housman; a hater of American musicals, Australian cricketers, litter and the political prejudices of Sir Peregrine Worsthorne."

Some of these characteristics were, of course, equally applicable to Inspector Morse. But Dexter was unlike his fictional creation in that he was excellent company.

He married Dorothy, a physiotherapist, in 1956; she survives him with their son and daughter.

1930-2017

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