The second was Christopher Wordsworth, a fine and perceptive critic, who (inadvertently, I’m sure) had given a red-hot hint about the identity of the murderer. Such lapses are most irritating and, I’m relieved to say, are considerably less common in the UK, than in the US, where fuller reviews and detailed blurbs are not infrequently mines of information. Why on earth not allow readers to discover for themselves exactly what is going to happen? Yet I should be grateful that today reviews are taken more seriously than they were a few decades ago, when only two or three carefully crafted sentences would usually suffice—sometimes brilliantly so.

I well recall a film critic giving his judgment on the latest block-busting biblical epic from Hollywood in four words: “God at his best.”

Let me add one final sentence. I never allowed anyone, not even my wife Dorothy, to read my novels before they were dispatched to my publisher. It was only then that I was ready for any criticism. All writers of course will sometimes wince silently at some of their earlier offerings, and wish to amend them. I remember, for example, once having Morse enjoying “a pint of the amber fluid” instead of “a pint of bitter.” The only changes I always made, when checking copy for omnibuses etc, involved crossing out “Lancia” and substituting “Jaguar” because ITV were unable to come up with an ancient Lancia and instead purchased, for some ridiculously give-away price, a maroon-colored Jaguar Mark II,1962, which, fully and luxuriously refurbished, recently changed hands for £150,000.

What really makes Morse tick?

Earlier I gave my own three greatest joys in life as crosswords, Wagner, the poets, and vicariously I tried to exemplify these interests/hobbies/passions, both in the novels and in the TV programs.

Crosswords? Well, Morse could almost invariably finish The Times crossword at breakneck speed (he was considerably quicker than I am) and in his vainer moments he would claim that solving that newspaper’s puzzle was the veritable benchmark of mental acumen and flexibility. Sometimes, however, he could cheat just a little. In The Wench Is Dead, for example, we read that Morse “bought The Times at the bookstall, got a seat at the rear of the train and had solved the puzzle in ten minutes before reaching Didcot. Except for one clue. He quickly wrote in a couple of bogus letters in case any fellow passengers were waiting to be impressed.” He did try once to interest Lewis in the delights of the cryptic crossword, but in vain.