Search Results

“... such as spy fiction or action thrillers, the form could provide a congenial home for women. Agatha Christie’s primacy as the queen of crime was unassailable, and Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh had numerous devoted followers. Here was a genre where James could make a name for herself and earn money. Her literary career began with a huge ...”

“... As an example of this kind of text, he cited the James Bond novels. Eco’s approach to Ian Fleming in this book was welcome for its critical gusto and its sense that he had really enjoyed the novels (by a sweet irony, Sean Connery would later take the lead in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film of The Name of the Rose). But he maintained, nonetheless, a ...”

“... noticeable changes in tone and register. In 1975 the DUP’s co-founder and leader, the Reverend Ian Paisley, referred to the Virgin Mary as ‘the Madonna of the Common Market’. The DUP has remained robustly opposed to the dangers of a ‘European super-state’, though there is no longer the same obsessive concern with the colour of the pope’s ...”

“... a reputation in Whitehall as a generous luncheon host and found a new circle of friends, including Ian Fleming and at least one duke (Bond’s enthusiasm for luxury brands seems to owe something to Wheatley’s style). He proudly related that the king, a professed fan of his fiction, had asked to see a copy of every report he wrote: all in all, a good war. His ...”

“... means chosen should, of course, be poison. The Brides in the Bath murderer George Smith and John Christie of Rillington Place fitted the bill, while the Kray Brothers became tabloid proto-celebrities even as they were ordering gangland rivals to be shot or hacked to death. But there were limits, and in 1966 the horrors that came out during the Moors murders ...”

“... Leo Colston, who recalls his summer as the little boy running between the secret lovers, Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Redgrave’s gaze in that film is watery and blank, which seems right for a man so psychologically traumatised by childhood memories that he had shut down his emotions. In retrospect, though, this had less to do with acting than with the ...”

“... usually serial, preferably home grown. British true crime tends to be about British killers – Ian Brady (See No Evil), John Christie (Rillington Place), the Wests (Fred and Rose), Dennis Nilsen (Des), Jeremy Bamber (White House Farm), Harold Shipman (Doctor Death) – while American true crime favours American ...”