Author Jim Eldridge talks to us about his latest title Murder at the National Gallery and gives us a glimpse of his upcoming projects.
Since 2016, Jim Eldridge has concentrated on writing historical crime fiction for adults. As a scriptwriter he had over 250 TV and 250 radio scripts broadcast in the UK and internationally. He was the creator and writer of Radio 4’s long-running King Street Junior, CBBCTV’s sci-fi drama Powers, and was a key member of the writing teams on The Ghost Hunter and Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde as well as many other TV and radio series.
He is also an acclaimed children's writer. Most recently he has been writing the Museum Mysteries series for adults. The latest in the series, Murder at the National Gallery, is published on 20th January by Alison & Busby or you can find it on our catalogue.
I was born in 1944, so the 1950s were my growing up period. We didn’t have a television so our entertainment was reading and radio. I loved the Goon Show on radio, but my real radio heroes were Alan Simpson and Ray Galton, who wrote “Hancock’s Half Hour” , and Charles Chilton who wrote “Journey Into Space” and “Riders of the Range”. Those were my heroes and I wanted to do what they did, write for radio.
I first started writing in my late teens, poems and short stories, none of which saw the light of day. But in 1965 I had a poem published in ‘Tribune’, and that led to my getting poems published elsewhere, small magazines, etc ; and in 1966 I became a performance poet. In the late 1960s poets were everywhere and we played to large audiences. In 1968 I was guest poet on John Peel’s Radio 1 show “Night Ride”, which went out at midnight. By then I’d decided that I wanted to write more than poetry, I wanted to write a novel and also write scripts. In 1971 I had a thriller novel published called ‘Down Payment on Death’. In that same year I had my first commission for a Radio 2 sitcom starring Arthur Lowe, Kenneth Connor, Liz Fraser and Ian Lavender called "Parsley Sidings", set in a small rural railway station.
For me writing for BBC Radio was like going to Heaven. I still remember the thrill I got entering the doors of Aeolian Hall (the HQ for BBC radio light entertainment) to meet Edward Taylor to talk about the idea I’d sent the BBC, “Parsley Sidings”. Under Ted’s guidance I learnt to write comedy, and I went on to write 21 episodes of “Parsley Sidings”. Then followed a period of writing sketch shows, including Ronnie Barker’s “Lines from My Grandfather’s Forehead”, for which we won the Writers Guild Comedy Award. This was the show on which I first worked with the brilliant producer, John Fawcett Wilson, who I was to work with for the next thirty plus years.
Together we did the radio version of “Down Payment On Death” (still being broadcast on Radio 4 Extra, most recently at Christmas 2021); “King Street Junior”, “Albert and Me”, Tony’s” and many other shows. I carried on writing for radio right up till 2010. During that time I also began writing for TV – at first comedy (including working with the legendary producer of “Hancock and “The Goon Show”, Denis Main Wilson) but then in the early 1990s I switched to writing children’s TV. Altogether I’ve had 250 radio programmes broadcast, and 250 TV episodes (broadcast in the UK and Internationally). You’ll find a list of my scriptwriting credits on my website.
I write every day. From my desk I have a view of part of our garden, but not too interesting a section as I need to concentrate on what I’m writing.
I had always been interested in Walter Sickert, the painter. He was instrumental in creating the Camden Town School in late Victorian/ Edwardian London. I was born and grew up in Camden Town, so was aware of his paintings (scenes from inside the old Bedford Theatre, which I visited when young to see pantomimes). I was fascinated to discover that in 1888 he had been a suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. I was stunned when my wife and I visited Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s home in Kent, to see a painting by Churchill in the conservatory of a group of people – including Walter Sickert. It seemed this man had known influential people for a long period of time (he died in 1942). It was Sickert who taught Churchill to paint using photographs. It struck me that Sickert and Jack the Ripper would be perfect for my “Museum Detectives” series, especially as one of my fictional heroes (Daniel Wilson) had been a (fictional) former member of the real Frederick Abberline’s squad who investigated the Ripper murders.
Growing up, I had always been interested in art (Van Gogh was my favourite artist, along with Turner), and this would give me the opportunity to bring art and crime together. So we have a woman, a prostitute who also modelled for Sickert, found dead and eviscerated on the steps of the National Gallery in 1897. Sickert is arrested for the murder following an allegation made against him. His only hope of proving his innocence is the detective who investigated him ten years before, Daniel Wilson. So Wilson and his partner, Egyptologist Abigail Fenton, become involved with a series of gruesome copycat murders. But what is the motive behind them?
In 2018 I had a meeting with the publishing director at Allison & Busby to talk about ideas. She suggested a series about murders in famous museums. Together we thrashed it out: when would it be set (we both like the Victorian era) and who would be our heroes. She liked the idea of Frederick Abberline, the real-life Ripper police investigator); I suggested that could restrict us for a series if we were going to be true to a real person who’s life was on record; and instead suggested a fictional detective who’d worked with Abberline, and was now working as a private investigator (Daniel Wilson).
I’d always liked writing chalk-and-cheese partnerships during my TV scriptwriting days; so for the Workhouse-raised Daniel, I liked the idea of a very educated woman, Abigail Fenton, who’d attended University, in this case Girton College at Cambridge. She would be an archaeologist, an expert on ancient Egypt. At the time of the first book she is living in Cambridge (with her sister) and working at curating an exhibition of Egyptian artefacts at Cambridge’s famed Fitzwilliam Museum. A body is found in one of the artefacts (a sarcophagus) and Daniel is called in to investigate – and the two meet. Fortunately, that book did well enough for Allison and Busby to commission further novels in the series. “Murder at the National Gallery” is the seventh. I am currently writing the eighth,“ Murder at the Victoria and Albert Museum”.
Alongside the Museum Mysteries, I’m also working on a series set in World War 2, featuring A Scotland Yard detective, Chief Inspector Edgar Saxe-Coburg, his girlfriend (later his wife) jazz singer/ pianist Rosa Weeks; and Coburg’s sergeant, Ted Lampson. There have been two so far: Murder at the Ritz, Murder at the Savoy, with the third, Murder at ClaridgesMURDER AT CLARIDGES coming out later this year.
I recently spent a clutch of Book Tokens I’d accumulated during lockdown (as gifts) to treat myself to half a dozen Georges Simeon “Maigret” novels to add to my collection. I also have Edward Marston’s “The Railway Detective” waiting.
I would have been a teacher. I qualified as a teacher in 1968 after 3 years at teacher-training college (having left school at 16 in 1961), but wasn’t able to start teaching until 1975 for various financial reasons. I taught in the Luton and Dunstable area from 19875 till 1987 (while also writing) and loved it. I specialised in working with children with additional needs, including teaching for a year at what was then called an ESN school – with a class of seven 7-year olds including 4 pupils who were mute, so we communicated through Makaton.
I have visited all seven continents – including Antarctica (the most breath-taking of all).
