Time to Be in Earnest (29 page)

Sometimes I am asked whether I am afraid that readers will get murderous ideas from my books. This is not a risk I take seriously: detective novelists are hardly in the business of promoting successful and undetected crime. But I do impose a censorship, sometimes subconscious, on what I write. I can’t read descriptions of torture or watch these scenes on film or television, and I would never describe the explosion of a terrorist bomb in the Underground. This isn’t because terrorists need my imagination to provide them with murderous ideas; it is a superstitious dread that the event might actually happen and I would never afterwards be absolutely sure that I hadn’t contributed to the horror.

I very seldom describe the act of murder, but make no apology for describing the dead victim realistically, and indeed vividly. The moment in a detective story when the body is discovered is one of horror and high drama, and the reader should experience both. I always describe the scene through the eyes of the character in the novel who discovers the body, and the scene is often most effective when that character is herself or himself innocent. The scene in
A Taste for Death
where the bodies of the ex-Minister of the Crown and the tramp are incongruously yoked in death in the vestry of a church in Paddington provides that contrast which, I think, is so effective in detective fiction, between horror and normality, evil and goodness. The fact that the bodies are discovered by Miss Wharton and Darren adds to the horror. In the description I repeat the word “blood” again and again because it was this all-pervasive redness which suffused Miss Wharton’s mind as it did her retina. In
Devices and Desires
, however, the body of Hilary Robarts is discovered by Adam Dalgliesh walking along the shore at nightfall. The description is analytical, cool, and Dalgliesh’s response after the initial shock is always that of a professional detective.

All this is rather removed from the subject of today’s talk. I have given myself quite a lot to think about; I am not sure whether the audience found it equally interesting.

To Westminster for a meeting in Church House of the Liturgical Commission. I don’t think I am particularly useful on the Commission, to which I was appointed by Archbishop Robert Runcie shortly before he retired. I enjoy the meetings I am able to get to, but the detailed work of revision is largely done in small groups. I like my fellow members, who tolerate my theological ignorance with Christian charity, but they are, of course, concerned to write or rewrite liturgy and my interest as a Vice-President of the Prayer Book Society is in attempting to preserve the treasure we have.

The Commission generates more paper than almost any other committee on which I have sat. The highly experienced Secretary, David Hebblethwaite, copes manfully, but my filing-cabinet drawer, which Joyce has labelled “God,” contains more bulging files than there are on any other subject. The bureaucracy of the Church of England would be terrifying if it were efficient.

The Church of England hasn’t shown much interest in or respect for its rich heritage of literature during the last decades and some parish priests, many of whom can’t cope with Cranmerian prose, would point out that their concerns lie elsewhere than in preserving what they see as an archaic and irrelevant liturgy. What surprises me is the neglect of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer by academics and its absence from the A-level English syllabus. Even for people uninterested in or unconvinced by Cranmer’s reformation theology, his Prayer Book is one of the great glories of English literature. It is difficult, too, to understand how students can read Shakespeare or view with understanding some of the greatest paintings in our galleries without some knowledge of the Authorized Version of the Bible or Tyndale’s translation on which it is based. I have been told by friends who teach English at universities that they have to give a short course in basic Christianity to some of their English students before some books of the canon are comprehensible.

In his magisterial biography of Thomas Cranmer, published in 1996, Diarmid MacCulloch said that Cranmer is among “a select band of Tudor writers, from Tyndale to Shakespeare, who set English on its
future course” and that “millions who have never heard of Cranmer or of the muddled heroism of his death have echoes of his words in their minds.” I wonder how long those words and cadences will, in fact, echo. I must resist paranoia, but it is sometimes difficult not to believe that there are people with a more sinister purpose than the neglect of two of the nation’s most seminal books. If you want to destroy a country’s traditions and soften it up for a culture you personally find more to your liking, there is no better way to begin than by an attack on its language and literature.

It was on this day in 1979 that I retired from the Home Office. The second part of my service was less satisfying than the first. I was transferred to the Children’s Department, whose responsibilities were then being reallocated to the Department of Health and Social Security, and then to the Criminal Policy Department, where I was concerned with juvenile courts and the law relating to juvenile offenders. The Department’s chief concern was the Children and Young Person’s Act 1969 which revised the law relating to juveniles and set up, among other provisions, the care order. The job of the Civil Service is to help implement Government policy, not to criticize it—and certainly not at my level, of Principal—but it seemed to me that the Act, based, as far as I know, on no research evidence, was mistaken from the beginning. The underlying premise was that any delinquency or serious criminal behaviour in a child or young person is the result of the juvenile’s circumstances and environment. Put this right and all will be well. In serious cases, therefore, the Juvenile Court would have power to place the offender in local authority care where he would receive the loving and responsible guidance and protection which he could expect from a good parent. Children at risk of abuse or ill-treatment could be similarly placed in care if the necessary conditions were satisfied.

The Maria Colwell tragedy, when Maria, under supervision by her local authority, was murdered by her stepfather, had an immediate impact on legislative proposals for strengthening the child protection provisions of the 1959 Act. Ministers announced that it would never
be allowed to happen again. It has, of course, happened again, and not infrequently. I feel some sympathy with social workers, who are faced with an appalling dilemma. They are criticized if they leave a child in her home and she is subsequently abused or even murdered; they are criticized if they too readily take her into care. It doesn’t surprise me that they have so often got it wrong; what does surprise me is the extraordinary and irrational optimism with which Parliament and the profession assumed they could get it right.

The years have shown how misguided the Act was. The official view put forward by the DHSS at the time and endorsed by ministers generally, was that any defects in its working were due to lack of resources. Of course there were not adequate resources; there never are. All governments are fond of legislating for what they see as social reforms well in advance of providing the necessary funds for implementing the changes. But the main problem was not lack of money, it was the lack of skill and experience. The new local authority Social Services were formed in the wake of the Seebohm and Redcliffe-Maud reorganizations. There was to be one integrated training for social workers, who were presumed to be able to undertake any aspect of the work. Inexperienced young people imbued with the latest socio-economic theories were faced with some of the most intractable problems of child delinquency or child abuse. It is small wonder that both the supervision orders and the care orders were largely ineffective. We have now had some years of experience of what local authority residential care has meant for thousands of deprived, unhappy young people.

I decided that I should leave on Christmas Eve at the age of fifty-nine years and six months. I was not due to receive my lump sum and to start my pension until my sixtieth birthday on 3rd August, but the success of
Innocent Blood
made early retirement possible. I had given the usual goodbye party earlier in the week and the office was very quiet and almost empty when I cleared the last drawer, washed my tea mug, packed it away in my tote-bag and closed the door for the last time. They had been twelve good years. I had gained experience which had been invaluable in writing
Death of an Expert Witness
and
Innocent Blood
, and was to prove equally valuable in future. I left with considerable respect for this much-misunderstood department and I had made more than one lasting friend. My life as a bureaucrat was now at an end and it was time to go.

I spent today completing my packing for the American tour which begins tomorrow, and tackling the bulging “Pending” file with Joyce. I had a telephone interview with the
Dayton Daily News
, advance publicity for my arrival there on 16th January. Dayton, Ohio, has not been included before in any of my American tours, but I have what is in effect a fan club there, largely due to the friendship and the vigorous support of a local journalist, Rosamond Young. Rosamond has persuaded my publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, that a visit to her town would be well worth the detour; knowing her, I’ve no doubt that it will be.

Perhaps the greatest change in publishing since my girlhood has been the death—sometimes dramatic, sometimes after a protracted period of ailing—of small individual publishing houses and the emergence of conglomerates, many of them international firms with wide and varying interests of which publishing is only a part. Publishing is, indeed, in danger of becoming an international monopoly with serious consequences not only for writers, but for the future of literature. A second great change, which has been strongly influenced by the first, is in the marketing of books. Before the war if you produced a new work of fiction, it would, if accepted, be published and, if the writer were well-known or lucky, reviewed and discreetly advertised. There might be journalistic features in newspapers and magazines and if the book were considered scandalous, as was
The Well of Loneliness
, the consequent furore would keep journalists and readers in a state of profitable indignation for weeks. A new novel was like a boat: the frail craft would be launched and left to breast the waves of public taste and the winds of critical acclaim or disdain either to sink or swim, without much help from the publisher. Some publishers, indeed, seemed to consider their imprint so prestigious that writers were fortunate to be published by them; it would be unreasonable for the author to expect
his publisher actively to sell the book or to concern himself overmuch with such sordid commercial concerns as sales figures or promotion.

Nowadays a new novel, particularly one which looks as if it has a chance of getting on to a national or international bestseller list, is promoted, packaged and sold like a new perfume. In this process the author is expected to take an active part, notably through author tours. To some this is a pleasure, to others an ordeal, while some few resolutely decline to participate. How far this hinders their sales is, I think, open to question. I can never find any reliable research on the profitability of author tours but, as publishers are still prepared to spend thousands of pounds arranging them, they must consider the time and effort worthwhile.