Poetry And Inspector Morse

A successful detective series can generate all manner of spin-offs. Think of all the interest in Sherlockiana. These days, Inspector Morse is beginning to rival the great consulting detective in terms of the extraordinary by-products of his recorded cases. In the summer, I accompanied a group of American readers to The Trout pub in Wolvercote, which had all the Morse book covers on the wall – fantastic publicity, quite apart from the contribution to the atmosphere.

Now I’ve laid my hands on a real curiosity – Morse and More, ‘a poetic tribute to the thirteen Inspector Morse novels of Colin Dexter’. This is the work of Patricia Buchanan, with illustrations by Janet Owen, and is compiled and edited by Antony J. Richards. It’s an avowedly unpretentious, light-hearted publication, which includes summaries of the TV shows to which the poems relate. Richards is also responsible for a nice little guide booklet called The Oxford of Inspector Morse. Both works are published by The Irregular Special Press.