Authors should never admit they enjoy writing books. It strips away the mystique. However, it would be silly for me to pretend that I don’t love writing this series. I wholeheartedly appreciate the opportunity, and I thank everyone at Raven Books for their support and professionalism, and especially I thank my editor Alison Hennessey, who is terrific. Raven is a great list, and I’m very proud to be on it.
I realise that it’s not always a good idea to specify how one’s plots or characters are inspired by real events, because it can backfire. “So everything in The Man That Got Away was true?” exclaimed a recent interviewer, pointing accusingly at my last Acknowledgements page. “I thought you had made it up!” Naturally, I didn’t know what to say. For one thing, I was sure I had made up a substantial part of it.
But why bother with research if you don’t draw inspiration from it? A degree of authenticity is what one strives for, after all. When I was just starting work on Murder by Milk Bottle, I told an audience in Lewes (situated between Brighton and Eastbourne) that I was currently musing on a tiny news story I had read. Just before the Bank Holiday in August 1957, motorists were inconvenienced on the road to Eastbourne by a mischievously turned road-sign. I said I was very drawn to this detail, but wasn’t sure yet how to use it. After the event a woman of mature years came up. “That road sign that was turned?” she said, in a confidential whisper. “That was me!”
If it’s a mistake to use research, though, I have boobed again. In 1957, there was – in reality – a striking amount of milk promotion going on in Brighton. The local paper was awash with milky references. A herd of cows really did graze on the Pavilion lawns, and there were many milk-related events. Meanwhile, the DRINKA PINTA MILKA DAY campaign, launched in 1957, famously went on to become one of the greatest advertising successes of all time. A caption in the Brighton Evening Argus really did shockingly (but hilariously) refer to some Dairy Princess beauty queens as “lactic lovelies”. When I discovered this – bending over a microfilm reader at The Keep (Brighton’s excellent local history archive) – I was so excited I nearly fell off my chair.
The celebrities on What’s Your Game? are clearly inspired by real showbiz types of the period; meanwhile, the childish way Inspector Steine is cold-shouldered backstage before the show is (sadly) based on the author’s own jaw-dropping experience. The larger-than-life Cedric Carbody has elements of various real people, but because his work as a comic broadcaster had to be good enough to convince, his “skits” are firmly – and with great affection and admiration – based on the work of the wonderful Arthur Marshall (1910-1989), who I’m sure was never unpleasant to anyone in his life.
Lady Laura Laridae occupies the position on the cliffs east of the town that is actually occupied by Roedean, but has nothing else in common.
The House of Hanover Milk Bar is located in the real-life Milkmaid Pavilion, which in recent years was given an upper floor as the Alfresco restaurant (it’s now something else).
The Sports Stadium in West Street – with its huge rink, and massive audiences for both ice shows and ice hockey – did exist, but has long gone, and many people living today in the city of Brighton and Hove have no idea it was ever there. It was probably better known as SS Brighton, and was demolished in 1965.
The Regent Ballroom and Cinema occupied the position on the corner of North Street and Queen’s Road where we now find Boot’s.
The children’s playground, with its little theatre, is now a distant memory, but a snatch of the talent show (fronted by the real-life Uncle Jack) can be seen in the charming film Brighton Story (1955) which is available on line courtesy of the British Film Institute. The young boy belting out, “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” was, of course, the most direct inspiration for this book. I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Finally, readers will have noticed that the location of the police station in these books is rather vague, and that the building itself is only partially described. There are steps outside, and some cells in the basement, and a staircase, and a locked cupboard, but that’s it. Brightonians will know that the real police station at that time occupied the lower section of the stately old Town Hall in what is now Bartholomew Square – but somehow I have always resisted using that building, while still happily locating the station in the same part of town. However, anyone curious about the old station can see it in dramatic action in Val Guest’s police procedural film Jigsaw (1962), much of which is shot on location. It’s almost as if the film-maker’s main intention was to preserve the police station premises – both inside and out – for the benefit of future novelists.
But while I have resisted using the station in the old Town Hall per se, I loved the fact that the canteen was in a different building. I am indebted to David Rowland’s excellent On the Brighton Beat: Memoirs of an Old-Time Copper (2006) for this and other useful information, such as the position of various police boxes around the town and also the existence of weekly pay parades. Another book by Rowland – Bent Cops: The Brighton Police Conspiracy Trial (2007) deals with the real-life corruption uncovered in the Brighton police in the autumn of 1957 – but this sorry tale was, of course, less useful to me. As we know, no such tawdry palm-greasing was required in the Twitten/Mrs Groynes universe.