Wagner? I attempted perhaps rather laboriously to explain Morse’s passion for music. It would have been very difficult for him to explain such a passion to Lewis, just as it is for me here to put these things into words. Much better surely for both of us to feel them? Once, in a car together, Morse betrayed an impatient arrogance when Lewis mistook an aria from Tosca sung by Maria Callas for a lively tune from Cats. But then Morse was a musical snob, who would have had no sympathy whatsoever with a woman I knew who had seen The Sound of Music on fifteen occasions. Such contempt was not Morse’s most attractive trait, was it? But perhaps we should forgive him.

The Poets? Certainly Morse spent much time reading poetry with deep and abiding love, both the English and the Classical poets. Occasionally read them aloud, too, as in The Remorseful Day, when seated one summer evening in The Victoria Arms with a pint of beer on the table in front of him, he gazed westward towards a miraculous sunset and recited a poem by Housman—a poet who, like Morse, had failed to get a degree from St. John’s College, Oxford.

How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;

Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound,
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.

(More Poems XVI)

Unusually for the melancholy Housman, this poem has an almost playful touch. The remorse here is for unfulfilled intention, an emotion experienced by most of us every day. But not by John Thaw, perhaps, whose life afforded a fulfilment of his ambitions and a manifestation of his extraordinary talents.

Did John Thaw ever say anything to you that you particularly remember?

Let me be honest. No one has ever asked me that question, but I would like to answer it. He told me that he enjoyed playing Inspector Morse more than any other role,

and for me that was an unforgettable compliment. I can just about understand why that great actor thought so. For me John Thaw was Inspector Morse. And in my will I have specifically stated that for as long as the copyright on the character remains with me, I shall permit no other actor to follow him. No other actor could follow him.

About the Author

About the Author