![]() ![]() ![]() Or maybe Charles Hatton was another pseudonym? Possibly he worked for the BBC, but information about him is scant.I, and indeed Melvyn, would be glad to learn more But why he adopted a pen-name for one collaboration and not others is unclear. I've consulted Melvyn Barnes, the greatest authority on Durbridge, and he is fairly sure that Thewes was a pen-name for Charles Hatton, who co-wrote several Temple books as Hatton. Durbridge also turned the story into a novel, but for that he had a co-writer, John Thewes, who seems rather to have been airbrushed from history. What happened was that Durbridge, a young man of 25, created Paul Temple for the radio,and the success of this story prompted thousands of listeners to demand more of the same - suffice to say that Durbridge certainly obliged them, as Temple became an immensely popular long-running character. There's a mystery, incidentally, about the authorship of this book. Durbridge was no Tolstoy, but he knew how to keep his readers/listeners interested. I'd previously listened to an audio version of this story, but it was still an entertaining example of the ripping yarn. I'm delighted to say that Harper Collins have just reissued five early Paul Temple books - all adapted from radio serials, - and I've just gulped down the first of them, Send for Paul Temple, my Forgotten Book for today. I've mentioned before that Francis Durbridge's Paul Temple is one of my guilty pleasures. ![]()
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