Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery by Francis Durbridge

As they gained in popularity, they were aired nationally instead on the Home Service. Initially the serials were broadcast on the service in the BBC Midlands Region service. Durbridge was still at college when he approached Webster, who was then with the BBC Midland Region, with his proposal for a mystery series about a gentleman detective. The radio series was a collaboration between writer Francis Durbridge and BBC producer Martyn C Webster, both of whom worked all of the radio broadcasts aired over the thirty years from 1938 to 1968. The longest-running team, and the most popular with audiences, was Peter Coke (pronounced Cooke) and Marjorie Westbury, who starred together in every serial made between 19 Westbury had played the role in every serial aired between 19. After the war the character was played by a succession of different actors: Barry Morse (1945), Howard Marion-Crawford (1946) and Kim Peacock (1946–1951). The Paul Temple characters and formula were developed in a succession of BBC Radio serials broadcast between 19, with several radio actors portraying the Temples. In general, the serials feature similar types of events, often in the same sequence. Here, Paul explained why certain events in the serial took place, which of these had been red herrings, and which had been genuine clues. Always surviving these, Temple would arrange a cocktail party or similar social event at which he unmasked the perpetrator.Īt the end of each tale, Paul, Steve and Sir Graham Forbes held a post mortem. Yet even this informal style of investigation invariably precipitated attempts by the suspects to hamper him, through traps, ambushes, even assassination attempts.

Over the course of each case, Temple eschewed formal interviews or other police techniques, in favour of casual conversations with suspects and witnesses. While he possessed no formal training as a detective, his background in constructing crime plots for his novels enabled him to apply deductive reasoning to solve cases whose solution had eluded Scotland Yard. A Paul Temple daily newspaper strip ran in the London Evening News for two decades. Always the gentleman, the strongest expletive he employs is ' by Timothy!'.Ĭreated for the BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple in 1938, the Temples featured in more than 30 BBC radio dramas, twelve serials for German radio, four British feature films, a dozen novels, and a BBC television series.

With his wife Louise, affectionately known as 'Steve' in reference to her journalistic pen name 'Steve Trent', he solves whodunnit crimes through subtle, humorously articulated deduction. Temple is a professional author of crime fiction and an amateur private detective. Paul Temple is a fictional character created by English writer Francis Durbridge.

Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery by Francis Durbridge