Edmund Crispin

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Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (sometimes credited as Bruce Montgomery) (October 2, 1921—September 15, 1978) an English crime writer and composer.

1 Life and work
2 Books
3 Reference
4 External links

[edit] Life and work

Montgomery graduated from St John's College, Oxford, in 1943, with a BA in modern languages, having for two years been its organist and choirmaster. From 1943 to 1945 he taught at Shrewsbury School. He first became established under his own name as a composer of vocal and choral music, including An Oxford Requiem (1951), but later turned to film work, writing the scores for many British comedies of the 1950s, most notably the Carry On series. He composed six scores for Carry On producer Peter Rogers including the original Carry On theme subsequently adapted for later films by Eric Rogers. Montgomery was responsible for both the screenplay and score of Raising the Wind (1961).

His novels feature the Oxford don Gervase Fen, who is professor of English language and literature at the university and fellow of St Christopher's College, a fictional institution that Crispin locates next to St John's College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W E Moore. The novels are written in a humorous, sometimes farcical style.

Gareth Roberts has stated that the tone of his Doctor Who novel The Well-Mannered War was modelled upon Crispin's style. He also remarks (of The Moving Toyshop) that "It's more like Doctor Who than Doctor Who." ^[1]

Montgomery's output of music and fiction all but ceased after the 1950s, but he continued to write reviews of crime novels for the Sunday Times. Alcoholism was a factor in his early death from a heart attack.

[edit] Books

The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944)
Holy Disorder (1945)
The Moving Toyshop (1946) was dedicated to Crispin's great friend Philip Larkin.
Swan Song (1947)
Love Lies Bleeding (1948)
Buried for Pleasure (1948)
Frequent Hearses (1950)
The Long Divorce (1952)
Beware of the Trains (1953) (short story collection)
Glimpses of the Moon (1977)
Fen Country (1979) (short story collection, published posthumously)

Crispin also edited seven volumes entitled Best Science Fiction, which were published during the 1960s.

[edit] Reference

David Whittle, "Montgomery, (Robert) Bruce [Edmund Crispin] (1921–1978)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31461, accessed 2 Nov 2005