Monday, September 12, 2011

Paul Temple and the Affair of the Tired Tiger part 1

I'm very pleased to be able to present another Paul Temple yarn, which has been sent over by a reader from Holland. I believe this one predates the strips that have appeared here previously. Unfortunately, none of the strips I've seen have been dated, although the language and general style have been late 1960s. There was a conscious effort in some of the later strips to alter the look of Paul Temple so that he became Francis Matthews, who was starring in the Paul Temple TV series from 1969, so that places those particular strips towards the end of the run, say circa 1970. This one might be from around 1966, although that's a very rough estimate.

The artist is John McNamara and the writer is credited as Francis Durbridge, although I suspect that he had nothing to do with the scripting; most of the Paul Temple novels were ghosted for Durbridge by various hands (Charles Hatton, Douglas Rutherford (McConnell) and Tony Hussey).

(* © Evening News)

2 comments:

  1. I always feel a sense of dirappointment when I discover that someome I thought wrote something actually didn't.
    I've got the Paul Temple readings released by the BBC and now Audio Go, and it's interesting to hear they differ from the radio series and in some cases updated to make them sound more modern for the time they were released in.
    I'm currently listening to the new Tim Frazer CD. I hope you're not going to tell me that Durbridge possibly didn't write that too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Reuben,

    I've no reason to suspect that Tim Frazer wasn't written by Durbridge; in fact, all his screen and radio credits are 'safe'. It's only the spin-offs: some of the novels had joint credits and, as with modern jointly-credited novels, the lesser-known name does most of the work. Four novels were definitely ghosted by Tony Hussey. A handful of later novels might have been by Durbridge.

    The strips I suspect were by another hand but I could be wrong. He was busy writing for TV at the time. Ian Fleming was credited with the Bond strips but they were all written by others.

    ReplyDelete

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS
Click on the above pic to visit our sister site Bear Alley Books