INSPIRATION FOR A NOVELIST
The poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, (1904-1972) resided in an early 18th century
terraced house at the foot of Crooms Hill opposite what is now the Greenwich
Theatre. The house was the setting for his 1961 murder mystery novel 'The
Worm of Death', the sixteenth in a series of twenty such novels written under
the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. He had begun writing the novels in 1935 with
'A Question of Proof', in which he created the character of the gentleman detective
Nigel Strangeways, who featured in all but four of the subsequent novels.
The novel is set in foggy Greenwich in 1960 and some of the action takes place
on and around Ballast Quay, the Cutty Sark Tavern and Robinson's scrapyard. In
a note to the reader Nicholas Blake reveals the three liberties he has taken in the
writing of the book: "(a) to alter the weather of February 1960; (b) to build a house
where no house is - on a certain quay in East Greenwich; and (c) to install Dr. Piers
Loudron, his daughter and two of his sons, in my own house at Greenwich."
The poetry of the sights and sounds of the river vividly embellish a novel that keeps
the reader guessing to the end which of the many possible suspects with a motive
is the real murderer.
terraced house at the foot of Crooms Hill opposite what is now the Greenwich
Theatre. The house was the setting for his 1961 murder mystery novel 'The
Worm of Death', the sixteenth in a series of twenty such novels written under
the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. He had begun writing the novels in 1935 with
'A Question of Proof', in which he created the character of the gentleman detective
Nigel Strangeways, who featured in all but four of the subsequent novels.
The novel is set in foggy Greenwich in 1960 and some of the action takes place
on and around Ballast Quay, the Cutty Sark Tavern and Robinson's scrapyard. In
a note to the reader Nicholas Blake reveals the three liberties he has taken in the
writing of the book: "(a) to alter the weather of February 1960; (b) to build a house
where no house is - on a certain quay in East Greenwich; and (c) to install Dr. Piers
Loudron, his daughter and two of his sons, in my own house at Greenwich."
The poetry of the sights and sounds of the river vividly embellish a novel that keeps
the reader guessing to the end which of the many possible suspects with a motive
is the real murderer.