Watson

COLIN WATSON (1920 - 1983)

Colin Watson's brilliant comic novels (televised under the title of Murder Most English) introduced readers to the country town of Flaxborough and its engagingly nefarious inhabitants. Though Watson spent most of his life in Lincolnshire, where 'Flaxborough' is located, he lived at 20, Seaton Crescent near Monkseaton station for most of the 1950s while working as a leader-writer for the Newcastle Journal In fact, his first, prize-winning novel Coffin, Scarcely Used (1958) was written in Monkseaton. Bump in the Night 1960), also probably written in Seaton Crescent and Hopjoy was Here (1962) achieved great success and enabled Watson to give up journalism. The novels are genuinely gripping detective puzzles as well as being stylishly funny. Watson's amusing study of the golden age of the English detective Snobbery with Violence was written in 1971.

In the novels, alert readers will find North East references, like the Jesmondia Hotel and Newbiggin wool. The former Moorish Electric Theatre and the Alhambra Club may well have an eye to the Spanish City in Whitley Bay, though a reference to the local beer as 'a sweet oily brew that soothed rather than stimulated' may not ring a bell. The map of Flaxborough contains Darlington Gardens and Cheviot Road.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
COLIN WATSON (1920 - 1983) Colin Watson's brilliant comic novels (televised under the title of Murder Most English) introduced readers to the country town of Flaxborough and its engagingly nefarious inhabitants. Though Watson spent most of his life in Lincolnshire, where 'Flaxborough' is located, he lived at 20, Seaton Crescent near Monkseaton station for most of the 1950s while working as a leader-writer for the Newcastle Journal In fact, his first, prize-winning novel Coffin, Scarcely Used (1958) was written in Monkseaton. Bump in the Night 1960), also probably written in Seaton Crescent and Hopjoy was Here (1962) achieved great success and enabled Watson to give up journalism. The novels are genuinely gripping detective puzzles as well as being stylishly funny. Watson's amusing study of the golden age of the English detective Snobbery with Violence was written in 1971. In the novels, alert readers will find North East references, like the Jesmondia Hotel and Newbiggin wool. The former Moorish Electric Theatre and the Alhambra Club may well have an eye to the Spanish City in Whitley Bay, though a reference to the local beer as 'a sweet oily brew that soothed rather than stimulated' may not ring a bell. The map of Flaxborough contains Darlington Gardens and Cheviot Road.
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