Autumn Term 2024:
16 September - 21 October (6 weeks)
Half term : Monday 28 October
Members: £85 Non-members: £105
Concessions: £20 (call the office 020 8340 3343)
The term ‘Golden Age’ in relation to crime writing is taken to mean inter-war crime fiction in which the plot is a puzzle (usually a whodunit), and this puzzle is often more important than characterisation. The course will concentrate on the rise and fall of the British Golden Age, but one of the six sessions will focus on the American scene.
In the six sessions, I will talk for the first half, perhaps reading some short excerpts from works under discussion. Students can interject at any time. After a short break, the second half will be a more general discussion among the class of the theme and set ‘suggested reading’ for the session. This ‘suggested reading’ will be a short novel or a couple of short stories, and it is only a suggestion, not compulsory.
(Although this is primarily a ‘Guide for Readers’, Andrew will be happy to discuss with students any crime writing plans or projects that they might have, perhaps during brief conversations after the main sessions.)
Authors studied will include Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith.
Week 1: The Roots of Crime Fiction
Week 2: Golden Age Part One
Week 3: Golden Age Part Two
Week 4: The Golden Age in America
Week 5: The Post-War Evolution of the Golden Age
Week 6: The Golden Age Style Today
Andrew Martin grew up in Yorkshire. After reading history at Oxford University, he qualified as a barrister, but never practised, instead becoming a journalist on various national papers.
He is the author of about thirty, books fiction and non-fiction. His fiction has been mainly in the historical crime genre, and he is perhaps best known for the ten Jim Stringer novels, featuring an early 20th Century railway policeman. One of these, The Somme Stations, won the Crime Writers’ Association Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction, and other books in the series were also shortlisted for CWA awards. His novels also include Soot, set in 18th Century York, and The Winker, set in London, Paris and Nice in the 1970s.
His novel, The Night in Venice, set in Venice and the Holloway Road in 1911, will be published in July by Weidenfeld. Andrew writes the ‘Reading on Trains’ Substack. Teaching: The Golden Age of Crime Fiction
