The Franchise Affair

Josephine Tey is renowned for writing contemporary novels that refer to older mysteries. The Daughter of Time was unquestionably about an injured police Inspector learning about Richard III and the “Princes” – a device borrowed by Colin Dexter. Brat Farrar was about a missing boy who seems to reappear but whose identity is doubted, for…

SIR THOMAS MORE , A MAN FOR ALL REASONS: SAINT OR SINNER?

‘Not exactly the horse’s mouth’ In Josephine Tey’s spellbinding novel ‘The Daughter of Time’, Detective Inspector Alan Grant has a reputation for being able to spot a villain on sight. Whilst in hospital with a broken leg, Grant is idly flipping through some old postcard portraits to while away the time. He turns over a…

Historical murder investigations redux

A fictional police officer lies in a hospital bed and his mind wanders to a historic case. However, it isn’t Inspector Alan Grant and the disappearance of the “Princes”, as related by Tey, but Inspector Morse and the definite murder of Christina Collins. Written in 1989, The Wench is Dead was broadcast on Radio 4…

Brat Farrar

Josephine Tey’s novel Brat Farrar is widely perceived as having been based on the Victorian Tichborne case where a well-upholstered Australia-based butcher’s son posed as the missing claimant to a baronetcy. Arthur Orton/ Castro persuaded Roger Tichborne’s mother that he was the heir to the title, but very few others and lost his court cases.…