Smithsonian Journeys

For the last few years (starting the year before Covid struck), I have been joining Smithsonian Journeys on their Classic British Mystery tours.

I have to admit, they are enormous fun for me. Well, they would have to be, wouldn’t they? It means I get to leave my desk and go out to meet new people, talk to them about crime writing and mystery writers, visit locations where so many books have been set, or the places where people lived and wrote, and enjoy great company.

The tours tend to start down in Torquay, which is a superb location to begin a journey since it was the birthplace of Agatha Christie. Many people will dispute who was the original creator of crime fiction – and it certainly wasn’t her – but few can argue that it was her incredible output that put crime writing and mystery novels firmly on the map. Without her, where would Harper Collins be now – or the film industry!

From Torquay we usually travel around the south of Devon and see places like Churston, where the ABC Murders had a major setting, and then Christie’s house, before going up to Dartmoor, which has been the location for so many of my books – as well as the Hound of the Baskervilles, of course. We show off some of the narrow ways about the moors, and the prison, and all too often we show off a Dartmoor fog or rain!

Then we travel up to the Cotswolds before Oxford and finally London. That means we can see places that inspired Dick Francis, and now his son Felix, as well as Colin Dexter, Dorothy L Sayers, PD James, Ruth Rendell, and so many others.

And in London there is the opportunity to visit the legal district and see the inns of court, the ancient halls where lawyers and barristers still operate, just along from the Temple Church; see Highgate Cemetery with the fabulous Victorian burial chambers celebrating the famous – and infamous. Visit The Mousetrap and see the longest-running play in history, and enjoy the Sherlock Holmes pub for a quiz night.

Finally, a day being taken round the Houses of Parliament, visit Covent Garden (always a high spot) and see the police museum at Bow Street, where you will learn the history of policing and detection in London.

I have been privileged to tag along on these trips, and have always found them fun and thoroughly entertaining. I’m really looking forward to the latest ones this year. The first is, I think, fully booked, but there are spaces on the second, for those who would like to come along for the ride. It would be good to see you!