The Spaniard's Curse - 1958 film review

I sat down to watch The Spaniard's Curse without high hopes, to be honest. The title didn't inspire much confidence, but the Talking Pictures TV channel has dug up are some hidden gems, and I was taken by surprise when the opening credits revealed that Kenneth Hyde's screenplay was based on a story by Edith Pargeter. And that, of course, was the real name of an author I've long admired - Ellis Peters.

The original story is, in fact, a novella, "The Assize of the Dying"; I hadn't even realised that it had been turned into a film. It's a reminder that she was doing very good work long before the era of Brother Cadfael. And the story is certainly a good one, a cut above many of the other short black and white British movies of the 50s.

We begin with a jury worrying over its verdict in a murder trial. Stevenson, the accused (Basil Dignam, in relatively early and untypical role) is ultimately found guilty, and when asked if he has anything to say, he uses the formula of an ancient Spanish curse on the judge (Michael Hordern), prosecuting counsel, and jury foreman. Hence the melodramatic title, although I feel it is  much inferior to The Assize of the Dying, which strikes me as genuinely evocative.

Soon both Stevenson and the jury foreman die, and attention focuses on the judge and his domestic circle, comprising his dashing journalist son (Tony Wright, who played Jack Havoc in the film version of The Tiger in the Smoke), his ward (Susan Beaumont, an attractive young woman whose screen career was bafflingly brief) and her new boyfriend (Canadian actor Lee Patterson). Hordern gives an excellent performance in quite a challenging role.

The set-up of the story is full of promise, and there's a very pleasing red herring which fooled me completely for a while. After that, it faltered a little, and personally I felt that had something to do with Patterson's lack of charisma. The ending also felt a bit rushed. On the whole, though, I found this an entertaining film, a little different from the run-of-the-mill, and it's worth a look if you get the chance.




 

Ellis Peters and Wellington Literary Festival

This year sees the centenary of the birth of Edith Pargeter, better known to crime lovers as Ellis Peters, the creator of Brother Cadfael. Although she often travelled abroad, set many books overseas, and was a noted translator of works written in Czech, she was first and foremost a woman of Shropshire, the county where she was born and spent nearly all her life, and which featured in many of her best books. Pleasingly, Wellington Town Council in Shropshire decided to celebrate her at its Literary Festival this year and I was honoured to be asked to be the guest speaker, discussing her life and work.

I imagine the invitation stemmed in part from the fact that I edited a collection of obscure Peters stories for a book published by Crippen and Landru some years ago, The Trinity Cat, and in part from the fact that I've written about her work on a few occasions, for instance in Following the Detectives, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. So I was glad to accept, although as I journeyed down the M6 to Wellington through ghastly traffic, I reflected that travel hasn't improved as much as it should since Cadfael journeyed around in the twelfth century.

One thing that impressed me enormously was the venue for the Festival. This is a large and recently built leisure centre which includes a public library, and much else besides. The very pleasant town councillor who introduced my talk was clearly proud of the centre, and quite right too. This is exactly the sort of project that provides tremendous benefits to a community, and my impression was that the facilities are well used and much appreciated.

Putting a library together with other leisure resources may sometimes be complicated and far from cheap, but the social dividends can be hugely rewarding if it is done well (in a more modest way, it's been done in my home village,Lymm, and again the results have been admirable.) In the 21st century, when maintaining social cohesion is, in many ways, as important as ever it has been, a high calibre venue such as this brings people together and ensures that events like the Literary Festival are not only possible but likely to be successful and greatly valued.

The festival committee had certainly done a good job in getting an eclectic list of speakers: it's not often that Germaine Greer and I are metaphorically rubbing shoulders in the same programme. Although I've visited nearby Ironbridge before, I 'd never stopped in Wellington previously, but I was really struck by what the local people, and their authority, have created. And I'm sure Edith Pargeter would have been impressed as well.

Ellis Peters memories

I mentioned Crippen & Landru the other day in connection with their new book by Philip Wylie. A few years back, I co-edited one of their books, a Lost Classic, featuring obscure stories by Edith Pargeter, aka Ellis Peters - The Trinity Cat and Other Mysteries.

My co-editor was Sue Feder. She was someone I never met, but she was a great fan of, and expert in, the work of Ellis Peters. Doug Greene introduced us via email and we corresponded about the various unpublished (in volume form) stories that Peters had written and which might be suitable for the collection. Sue’s enthusiasm was infections, and it was a sad blow when, some time before the book was published, she died after a long fight against serious illness.

I’ve been involved in various literary collaborations over the years, and I think of the Peters venture with considerable affection. The stories in The Trinity Cat, by and large, are set in fictionalised versions of her beloved Shropshire Many of them were written in the 50s, but they retain their charm, I think. She was a capable writer, though I’d describe her plotting as workmanlike rather than brilliant. Agatha Christie she was not –but she was much better than the great Agatha at evoking place.

I like to think Sue Feder would have been proud of ‘our book’. It was a pleasure to collaborate with her, albeit at a distance. It’s an odd thing, by the way, but three of the books I’ve produced over the years have been co-written with people whom, for one reason or another, I never actually got to meet.

Cadfael Country

I’ve been asked to contribute a couple of essays to a book about locations associated with crime fiction, and by a lucky chance, I’ve managed to visit them both in the last week. One was Oxford, the other Shropshire.

Now, Shropshire is a green and pleasant county, but its tranquillity was regularly disturbed for fictional purposes in the books of the late Ellis Peters. Peters (whose real name was Edith Pargeter) was an author of considerable distinction for many years, but it was only with the success of the Brother Cadfael series, the first of which she published (expecting it to be a one-off) at the age of 64 that she became an international best-seller.

Peters was born in the little village of Horsehay, close to Ironbridge Gorge, and she retained a lifelong devotion to her native county, which was where she lived for most of her life. It’s worth noting that not only in the Cadfael Chronicles, but also in her Felse series, which have a contemporary setting, she makes use of the Shropshire landscape, though she tends to disguise it.

Shropshire is an attractive place to visit. There are many lovely rural walks, I am sure, but last week I concentrated on the old and charming towns. Ludlow and Shrewsbury are terrific, but there are other appealing places, such as Bridgnorth and Church Stretton. As Peters said:

‘I have used this landscape, native and familiar to me, in all my books; sometimes in its veritable shape and by its own names, sometimes with its edges diffused into a topography between reality and dream, but just as recognisable, for those who know it as I do, as if it had been mapped with the precision of an Ordnance Survey sheet. I did not set out deliberately to make use of my origins. Shropshire is simply in my blood, and in the course of creation the blood gets into the ink, and sets in motion a heartbeat and a circulation that brings the land to life