- Under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin, he wrote a series of mystery novels and short stories featuring the character Gervase Fen.
- Also as Edmund Crispin, he edited several collections of science fiction short stories. The first, "Best SF" (1955), had great influence on acceptance of the SF genre as serious writing in Britain.
- His Gervase Fen novel "Frequent Hearses" takes place in and around a British movie studio, and contains many insider jokes about actors, directors, musicians, and others in the business.
- The ending of Strangers on a Train (1951) which features a carousel spinning out of control was taken from his book The Moving Toyshop (1946), writing as Edmund Crispin. Sir Alfred Hitchcock purchased partial rights in order to use the idea.
- He was a hopeless alcoholic. Towards the end of his career this condition prevented him from finishing scores, thus work became more difficult to find. Studied with author Kingsley Amis, who remained his closest friend.
- Close friend of the poet Philip Larkin. and the writer Kingsley Amis.
- Educated at St Johns College Oxford .
- His most personal work was for Raising the Wind for which he wrote the script and music which took him 4 years mainly due to the fact that teaching music is something of a serious business and there are no standard jokes on the subject.
- His last outing as Edmund Crispin 'Glimpses of the Moon' (1977) includes a film composer Broderick Thouless who hates the dissonant stuff he has to write for horror films.
- He was a published and performed composer whilst still an undergraduate, and was only in his early twenties when his first book was published. His closest university friends were Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, and, of the three of them, he was generally expected to have the most successful career. However, his two friends achieved considerable and enduring fame as respectively, a novelist and a poet, whilst his own talents seemed to diminish after his early twenties and he was something of a forgotten man by the time of his relatively early death.
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