Francis Durbridge - crime author of the old school

On November 25, 2012, a man's 100th birthday would have been to celebrate, who, through his actions, made a decisive contribution to bringing artistic entertainment directly into the German living room.

Francis Durbridge us many relaxing evenings and many famous crime novels , which were first broadcast as radio plays by the English BBC and then captivated the Germans as thoroughly on the television armchairs as if a crook had actually put on hand.

Durbridge first wrote these works as radio plays and only then expanded and published it in over 35 novels, so his still famous books were created in a tradition that many believe that it is an invention of a much later time:

Why do we commemorate his birthday? Can crime novels be called artistic entertainment at all? This has long been doubted in the European Culture District, while others classify such a question as similarly absurd as the question of when literature (or art ) begins.

Only for a long time did it belong to us to the “good tone” and the usual assessment in the literature that the crime novels should be regarded by all educated people as trivial literature. This not only included that the quality of a crime novel was likely to be estimated to be low, including in educated circles not too long ago even that it was not allowed to admit crime novels at all.

This topic offers no few ways to make psychologically successful fine -tuning, to explore and present the motifs of a person or the drive forces and undesirable developments in a society, develop successful drama and to make skilful milieu descriptions, like any other topic that has already been dealt with in the “demanding literature”.

In this way, the opinion of a prevailing literary business also never had to write inhibitions to be classified as crime novels in order to only Fjodor Dostojewski's novel “Fault and Atonement” , Friedrich Dürrenmatt's “The Richter and his Henker” , Theodor Fontane “Unterm Birnbaum” or Wilhelm Raabes as examples from the “Classic Literature ” .

Today, however, the crime novel is now also viewed as a serious literary cat, for which even a literature award is awarded. It only took a little: While America has been awarding the Edgar Allan Poe Award since 1946 and two more crime awards since the 1980s, France has been awarding the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Great Britain since 1955 since 1955. Crime Prize, the Friedrich Glauser Prize, followed).

If it is good, it is of artistic value if it is very good, it is art, and it can still entertain - so you could briefly characterize the attitude of many people from today to the traditional debate about “serious” and “entertaining” literature and film art.

In any case, Durbridge has created works that have not only entertained people in his home country for over half a century. He learned the skills for the creation of his exciting entertainment art not only at the university, but also in life: Francis Henry Durbridge studied at the University of Birmingham, old English and economy.

After graduating, he even worked as a stock exchange for a short time, but has always written during his school days and also during his studies and now turned to the letter completely when he was able to sell his first radio play “Promotion” to the BBC at the age of 21 (1933).

In 1938 he invented his character Paul Temple , a crime writer and detective who helped him to take a permanent employment by the BBC: Paul Temple was the hero of a successful radio play series, the Paul Temple cases sent 29 from 1938 and 1968. From 1949 to 1968 Paul Temple was heard in Germany, until 1966 with René Deltgen and in 1968 with Paul Klinger as a spokesman, Paul Temple's wife Steve was spoken almost continuously by Annemarie Cordes.

From 1946 to 1952, four feature films were made from the stuff of the radio plays, and in the 1960s the BBC bought the license for the Temple character, with which a television series with 52 episodes was created from 1969. The first international co-production of television history, between BBC and ZDF.

Other characters created by Durbridge are Harry Brent and Tim Frazer , who also reached the public in novels and films. Many of the novels by Francis Durbridge were recorded in various European countries in a line -up with nationally known actors for television and thus achieved a book that was far exceeding.

The streets made according to Durbridge templates regularly emptied the streets in Germany, some fellow citizens still remember television events such as “the other” from 1959, “It is so far” from 1960, “Tim Frazer” from 1963, “Melissa” from 1966, “Like a Blitz” from 1970.

Although the ratings of up to 90 % are certainly justified in the program pover at that time: Germany was tense during the broadcast of the multi-part, and the cabaret artist Wolfgang Neuss caused serious excitement when he revealed the necklace murderer (although he had only advised it).

Durbridge also seven stage plays , the last one with the title “deep in the night” was premiered in London in 1991 and even survived the death of the author (1998 in London) in his radio play implementation.

You hear a sample of his skills in the following radio play "deep in the night".