Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
As you no doubt recall, the last series with Subaru Dianne was a huge hit, so we have brought her back for an encore. Hopefully, the first of many!
So it’s Josephine Tey night on Medium Cool, with Subaru Dianne!
I’ll let SD take it from here! Let’s give her a warm welcome!
Josephine Tey, Part I
discussion with Subaru Dianne
Slight schedule change, my fellow Medium Coolios. At Water Girl’s suggestion, we’re expanding the Josephine Tey discussions from two sessions to three, so we can devote an entire evening to her masterwork The Daughter of Time and its lasting influence.
So the new schedule is:
July 30 — four mystery novels featuring Detective-Inspector Alan Grant
August 13 — three (more-or-less) “stand-alone” mysteries
August 27 — the enduring legacy of The Daughter of Time
Tonight, let’s talk about four of her Alan Grant mysteries:
The Man in the Queue, 1929 (originally published under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot)
A Shilling for Candles, 1936
To Love and Be Wise, 1950
The Singing Sands, 1952 (published posthumously)
(I don’t include The Franchise Affair here — Grant is a minor character in that book, and we’ll discuss it in two weeks along with the non-Grant Miss Pym Disposes and Brat Farrar).
Alan Grant is an agreeable character with some very human flaws, making him much more relatable than, say, Christie’s Hercule Poirot. And all of Tey’s works (like Sayers’s) explore character and human relationships, sometimes relegating plot to a secondary consideration.
Have you read any of Tey’s mysteries? If so, please tell us what you admire (or don’t) about her books. And if she’s new to you, I hope you’ll be intrigued enough to give her a try!
SiubhanDuinne
Her name is pronounced TAY, not TEA.
Elizabeth (known as Beth) MacKintosh was an intensely private person, and until a few years ago very little was known about her personal life … but one of her closest friends was the internationally renowned actor Sir John Gielgud. She lived most of each year quietly with her father in Scotland, but periodically decamped to the glittering lights of London’s West End, where she was a successful playwright. Interesting contrasts.
SiubhanDuinne
Her plays, radio dramas, poems, and “straight” (non-mystery) novels were almost all under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot.
The name Josephine Tey was from one of Beth’s great-great grandmothers.
SiubhanDuinne
And my bad in the photo caption: I mistyped her death year. She actually died in early 1952, at only 55.
Alison Rose
I’ve never actually read any of her works, though I’ve heard a good deal about them, and the titles of all the Grant mysteries sound intriguing. (I love a book title that doesn’t seem to say much but gets you thinking about what it might mean.) Are these meant to be read in publication order, or can you jump in anywhere?
SiubhanDuinne
@Alison Rose:
Well, you can read the stand-alones in any order, or none. My personal preference is to read series books chronologically, but it seems to me it’s less important with Tey. But some of the later books refer to people in earlier ones, so it’s nice to have that context.
There are millions of people who have read nothing of hers but The Daughter of Time. We’ll talk about why that is in a few weeks.
Also, if you read them in order, you can kind of track her development as a novelist, if that’s of interest.
ETA: Agree with you about titles! Which in particular of Tey’s titles do you find especially intriguing?
Anne Laurie
Can’t stay to read future comments (I’ll check back later), but I was fond of Tey back in my most intense reading days (fifty years ago, sigh). ..
One minor question: I read somewhere that the Muriel Willis / Anthony Adverse character in Christie’s Three Act Tragedy was based on Josephine Tey, playwright. Is this plausible, in your estimation?
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
I’ve heard, or read, the same thing. It’s not implausible, IMO, but I don’t think it would have occurred to me without having come across that statement. I’ll make a point of re-reading Three-Act Tragedy with Tey/Daviot in mind!
BellaPea
I read her Miss Pym Disposes back in the day. My late grandmother loved her books. It was quite interesting, a mystery set in a girls school in England.
Evap
I have read most of her books, but it was when I was a grad student 40 years ago. I don’t remember the plots of the Alan Grant books but i think I read them all. At that stage of my life, when I found a mystery writer I liked I read everything I could get my hands on. Brat Farer is one of my all time favorite books and I have reread it many times. I would be interested in learning more about Tey
SiubhanDuinne
@BellaPea:
She actually attended a very similar school of physical training, and had an accident there that inspired the murder method in the book.
Miss Pym Disposes is one of the earliest mysteries I ever read (apart from Nancy Drew and Company), and started me on a lifelong affection for mysteries in academic settings :-)
Barbara
I will definitely check them out. I just finished all 28 Alan Banks mysteries. I’m a compulsive reader.
SiubhanDuinne
@Evap:
I adore Brat Farrar, both as a book and as a character. Looking forward to further conversation about it / him in two weeks.
To the best of my knowledge, there’s only one comprehensive biography of Elizabeth MacKintosh/Gordon Daviot/Josephine Tey. It is fairly recent (can’t check the publication date easily, but I would say within the last decade). It is Josephine Tey: A Life, by Jennifer Morag Henderson. Quite sure it’s still in print and readily available, including on Kindle.
Alison Rose
@SiubhanDuinne: I do tend to prefer publication order because I figure, that’s how I would’ve read them if I were alive to do so when they came out!
To Love and Be Wise is really grabbing me, because I’m like, what could this signify in a mystery?? The husband did it? The wife? Both together??? :
ETA: Sweet, Amazon has the first book on KU. *click*!
Evap
@SiubhanDuinne: I love mysteries in academic settings! Have you read Amanda Cross?
SiubhanDuinne
@Barbara:
Making a note to check out the Alan Banks books. Looks like a series that really should be read in chronological order, yes?
SiubhanDuinne
@Evap:
Oh gosh, yes! Kate Fansler is one of my literary heroines!
Miss Bianca
OK, guess it’s time to revisit Tey! I read a lot of her mysteries when I was in high school (including The Daughter of Time, which, yeah, for reasons is the one that stands out to me at this long remove.)
Just ordered The Man in the Queue from the library.
Annie
I have read and enjoyed them all though I don’t recall To love and be wise very well.
I reread Man in the Queue a few years ago and did not much like the treatment of the musical star Ray Marcable.
SiubhanDuinne
(Taking 10 minutes or so to fix a fast bite of supper. I’ll be back soon to check out any new comments.)
zhena gogolia
I read The Singing Sands a long time ago. I liked it, but somehow never went back to her work. We recently started The Man in the Queue, but it wasn’t suited to reading aloud, so maybe I’ll read it to myself if I ever finish The Raj Quartet (I only have time for discretionary reading just before bed, and I fall asleep very soon).
Brachiator
I recently re-watched the 1937 Alfred Hitchcock film Young and Innocent, featuring Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney. It is quite good and revisits common Hitchcock tropes, such as an unlikely couple on the run, and a wrongly accused person who has to solve the crime he is charged with. The main stars are quite appealing, although the film is marred by an unfortunate use of blackface towards the end. Still, it is a good example of early, British Hitchcock.
Even though I have seen the film a number of times, I didn’t realize that it was based on the Josephine Tey novel A Shilling for Candles. However it reworks a lot of elements, omits some major characters and plot elements, so cannot be considered to be a true adaptation of the novel.
But now it’s got me a bit curious about the author and her works.
Barbara
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, definitely. They aren’t the best I’ve ever read but they are high quality and involving. Also very sympathetic portrayals of women.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
I have never seen it. Should remedy that, although UGH about the gratuitous blackface. It’s a good, densely-plotted book.
In common with so many other Golden Age writers, Tey (especially in the earlier novels) indulged in some casual bigotry — completely unnecessary to advancing the story and offensive to modern sensibilities. May be useful to be aware of that for those of you who are planning to read The Man in the Queue soon.
Strictly in my personal opinion, Queue is about a third longer than it needs to be. I don’t think Tey was yet very confident as a fiction writer. But despite its flaws, there is much to love about it — and it’s a good introduction to Alan Grant.
Alison Rose
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, that’s an unfortunate element of many novels written anytime before…oh, 2000 :P But especially before say the 60s or so. You expect it but it can sometimes still take you aback. I remember reading an Edith Wharton novel (I think it was The House of Mirth) and I get to a certain part and it was like…oh yeah, everyone hated Jews back then. Fun times.
Joy in FL
I bought The Daughter of Time from Scholastic Books when I was in junior high (early 70s). I remember loving that book. It was possibly the most sophisticated book I had read up to that time. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything else by her. I might change that situation, because I love these series here, and I would like to participate.
SiubhanDuinne
A lot of people seem(ed) to believe that Tey was bisexual or lesbian. That is apparently not true, but as a straight woman she did indeed hang out with LGBTQI+ friends, particularly in London’s literary and theatrical circles.
I’m trying to avoid a plot spoiler here, but she wrote a female character in one of the books who occasionally, deliberately, presents as a man. This has nothing to do with gender dysphoria, but is explained as being a practical solution to the problems of professional misogyny and sexual harassment:
“I wanted to travel. To photograph the world and everything that was beautiful in it. So I took the car and went West. I wore pants in those days just because they were comfortable and cheap, and because when you are five feet ten you don’t look your best in girlish things. I hadn’t thought of using them as—as camouflage until one day when I was leaning over the engine of the car a man stopped and said: ‘Got a match, bud?’ and I gave him a light; and he looked at me and nodded and said: ‘Thanks, bud,’ and went away without a second glance. That made me think. A girl alone is always having trouble—at least in the States she is—even a girl of five feet ten. And a girl has a more difficult time getting an ‘in’ in a racket. So I tried it out for a little. And it worked. It worked like a dream. I began to make money.…”
SiubhanDuinne
@Barbara:
Sounds like an engaging series! Thanks for the lead.
Auntie Anne
It’s been years since I’ve read anything by Tey, so plan on revisiting them.
Nelle
I was surprised when I began The Man in the Queue. I seem to have forgotten the whole book! And the paragraphs were easily a page long. The print in the copy that I got was so very small. Then I thought, each one of those says a lot more about me and how I’ve aged than about the book. My patience with long paragraphs has greatly diminished.
I’m disposed to like Grant, yet I was disturbed by how quickly he fastened on early assumptions. Sometimes, yes, it got him closer to the goal. But other times?
H.E.Wolf
Doing a quick fly-by to say that I love all of the Josephine Tey novels in their individual ways, although as with Sayers there are occasional aspects that are Of Their Time. (The lack of anyone else’s alarm about what worried the murderer in The Man in the Queue would be an example. I hope that’s sufficiently vague.)
Some of the things I enjoy about Tey’s books:
– Numerous female characters of all ages who have agency, determination, and inner lives. (Too many of them to list here!)
– Interesting male supporting characters. Pipe-smoking minister, admiring swain, truck-stop short-order cook, tinker, tramp, aeroplane pilot, boarding-school student, ballet dancer, ageing roué, fugitive, Grant’s co-worker Sergeant Williams….
– Understated humor – more a matter of wry perspective than joke-y comic bits.
– Inspector Grant’s “flair”, or sense of intuition.
– The author’s ability to capture ambience/a sense of place.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
I’m extremely fond of The Singing Sands, perhaps because I’ve always had such a visceral attachment to Scotland and especially the Western Isles. And the relationship between Grant and his cousin Laura is just wonderfully depicted. And I love the way Tey shows how Grant’s claustrophobia is almost paralysing in the early chapters and how it falls away from him as he gets more and more involved with figuring out the mystery.
Personal note: My grandmother absolutely adored Tey. She read and reread the entire Tey canon several times, with the single exception of The Singing Sands. She herself was painfully claustrophobic, and Tey’s descriptions of Grant’s sufferings were so true to life that they brought on all the symptoms!
Denali5
I am currently reading The Daughter of Time-thank you for introducing it to me. I am really enjoying it.
grandmaBear
I read Daughter of Time some years ago. I don’t know why I didn’t follow up on the others since I tend to read all of an author’s works if I find a book I like. But because of this blog’s encouragement I’ve read so far Miss Pym, Brat Farrar, the franchise affair, the man in the queue and a shilling for candles. Just started To Love & be Wise. Have enjoyed them very much. I like that Alan Grant is very human, and seems sometimes at a loss. Not at all Poirot like. She delves into the psychological a lot, which I like. Though Poirot always insisted that he deduced the murderer from character rather than physical evidence, Tey’s characters actually seem to do that more than Poirot did. Tey’s characters seem more complex and interesting to me.
SiubhanDuinne
@H.E.Wolf:
And the writers and other “artistic” village characters we meet in To Love and Be Wise … and then re-meet some of them in The Daughter of Time! Delicious!
SiubhanDuinne
@grandmaBear:
Absolutely agree with your assessment, and I’m so glad you’re enjoying Tey’s books.
SiubhanDuinne
@Denali5:
That’s great — I’m so glad!
Tehanu
I’ve read them all, but not recently except re-reads of The Daughter of Time — which made me a Ricardian — and Brat Farrar, which are my favorites of hers. The BBC did a mini-series of Brat Farrar which I enjoyed very much when I saw it, back in the ’80s. I also seem to remember that Tey’s play about Richard II, Richard of Bordeaux, starred Gielgud.
SiubhanDuinne
@Nelle:
Good observation. Yes, he wrestles again and again with his “flair” — gut instinct, which can easily lead to jumping to a wrong conclusion — throughout the series. I like the fact that he’s intelligent enough to recognise that his flair is useful only when it’s tightly reined.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tehanu:
It did. It made Gielgud a theatrical star.
I remember that Brat mini-series. Quite well done, as I recall, although so many of the book’s small, delightful touches were missing.
sab
I haven’t read any of her books except The Daughter of Time. I read that back in middle school, and it made enough of an impression that I think that is why I ended up a history major in college.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tehanu:
I’m a Ricardian too, of course :-)
Recently took an OLLI class on Richard III The instructor did a casual survey of how people first got interested in Richard. An overwhelming number cited Daughter, with just enough Sharon Kay Penman to keep things interesting :-)
Josie
I was able to obtain a book containing all of these stories on my kindle. I have never read any of her books before and was completely mesmerized. I loved her characters and their complexity, men and women both. I could easily picture them in my mind and understand how they were reacting to events. The relationship between Grant and the stage actress that wove through several stories was very interesting.
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
Yes, Marta Hallard is a wonderful character! Given Tey’s own theatrical circles, I’m wondering now if she fashioned Marta on a particular actress — or if, as is more usual, she’s a composite of several different people plus Tey’s imagination.
Joy in FL
I just got the Kindle version of Daughter of Time for $.60, so that’s cool.
Lapassionara
@SiubhanDuinne: thank you for giving time to this discussion tonight.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lapassionara:
Thank you! I always enjoy these discussions. It’s a treat to read others’ opinions of books and writers I know. And I really love knowing that someone may be intrigued enough by these Medium Cool threads to try an author they’re unfamiliar with.
Princess
Warning: The Man in the Queue is pretty racist. And that’s after the publisher edited it to be less racist.
I don’t want to yuck everyone’s yum but I’ve never been able to get into Tey. The one where Grant is creeping on a teenager is also hard to take.
Gretchen
@zhena gogolia: who are you reading aloud with?
Feathers
To start, I recommend the SheDunnit podcast. There is a biographical episode on Tay from 11/9/21. There is another on the real life case that inspired The Franchise Affair from 10/18/22.
I read The Daughter of Time long ago, I think in high school. Thoroughly enjoyed, but did not become a Ricardian. Read Brat Farrar some time ago, really loved it. Want to reread, but I’m behind in my summer classic film book challenge. Loved the characterization and the way it made the crime seem understandable.
Read The Franchise Affair and The Singing Sands for the SheDunnit book club. The Singing Sands definitely my favorite for the slow way the whole thing plays out, with Grants’s claustrophobia quietly sitting behind the scenes the whole time. (I forget, does it mention the fact that the injury he’s in the hospital for in The Daughter of Time was falling through a trap door? That would give me claustrophobia as much as overwork.) I really like the way Tey has Grant quietly observe people and lets the story play out without a great deal of hurry. The descriptions of Scotland are lovely. Tey has a way of being poetic without feeling like she’s slowing the story down. The story does come together quickly at the end, but I like a bit of wild plotting in my mysteries.
I got The Man in the Queue and The Daughter of Time. Decided to read Daughter first and never got to Man in the Queue. Wrong choice. I’m going to have to admit that I intensely disliked Daughter this time around. It didn’t convince me the first time. This time all I could think of was ACAB and that this was lab leaks in Wuhan levels of sophistry. Grant hand waves away the Wars of the Roses as unworthy of consideration, but trying to “do his own research” on the deaths of the princes in the tower without looking at everyone’s actions at the time as happening in the context of a series of civil wars where 60-70% of the nobles in the line of succession were killed, either on the battle field or executed for treason. Of course all the letters are polite! Why would a mother make nice with the murderer of her sons? To save her own life and that of her daughters! The Tides of History podcast has two very good episodes on The Wars of the Roses, from January of 2019. That whole season is fascinating, going into how it wasn’t just England, all over Europe countries were thrown into civil wars over who had the right to be king. One thing he points out is that what happened in all of these wars was that kings had to personally be able to actually rule, meaning personally administer justice and keep the peace. Rules of succession were there, but once a throne was vacated, it was all about who had a valid claim to the throne and could convince the nobles (who could raise armies) that they were capable of ending the violence and ruling during the peace that followed
Apologies for yucking people’s yum. But this hit me hard. I guess it’s who I am now.
Feathers
@Princess: I think I will reread this. I have it out of the library. In my The Daughter of Time reread, I kept thinking “This is all pretty damn Tory.” Tey is spending a great deal of time going over what the line of succession would have been, ignoring the fact that the last round of the War of the Roses took out about half the people who would have been in that queue. It’s pretty damn obvious that the actual line of succession beyond Edward’s two sons was not going to be respected. Also, she brings up some horrible deed as being exactly what you would expect from the Irish.
I do like her books, though. I’d teach The Daughter of Time in a class on misinformation.
zhena gogolia
@Gretchen: I read to my husband while he cooks. 😄
DCA
The first Tey I read, a long time ago, was Singing Sands, and it remains my favorite (even after plenty of rereadings). Grant starts with almost nothing, and gradually finds his way (with some false starts) into quite a crime. It has some of the Scottish landscape writing that is the best feature of The Man in the Queue (her first book and not, for me, close to being as good as most of the others).
hotshoe
hoopla available through my local library has very little by Josephine Tey — but they do have (unabridged) audiobooks of Miss Pym Disposes, and Brat Farrer. So that could be good to listen to for the next discussion.
I will try giving Miss Pym a listen …
something fabulous
Aww, completely missed this one! Will try to take a note for the time and make it to the other(s)– she’s a fave!
LiminalOwl
Lateas usual (with a better excuse than usual—cataract surgery last Thursday, with unexpected complications), but just in case anyone is still reading…
I read The Daughter of Time at my father’s instigation when I was ten, and then (his favorite) Brat Farrar, and then the other four in the two-volume set on his shelf—many times over, especially those first two. I have not yet read To Love and Be Wise and have bounced off The Man in the Queue twice because of the misogyny and bigotry but am now trying again.
Oh, and I liked Miss Pym Disposes back then but was confused by it. Hoping an adult read-through will be easier
The Thin Black Duke and I saw the film The Lost King a few months ago, and I thought he’d be interested in The Daughter of Time, but he finds Grant too unlikable. Alas. I’m still hoping he’ll like Brat Farrar.
TVD
Love all of Tey’s novels. Started reading them in my teens and 30+ years later still think about them. Haven’t read the plays. Reread Daughter of Time, Brat Farrar and The Singing Sands in the past few years and thought they held up well. She and Marjorie Allingham and my faves from that period. Need to get the biography of Elizabeth!
KimK
I love Balloon Juice! I have only read Daughter of Time (at least 4 or 5 times over 40 years). Why haven’t I read any of Tey’s other books when I loved that book so much?
Thanks so much for all the intel on all these titles…headed to my library site right now. Looking forward to the discussion on Daughter of Time.
Tehanu
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, I read the Penman book too. I wonder, have you ever read John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting? It’s a fantasy about a kind of alternate Middle Ages where the Byzantine Empire is greedily trying to overthrow most of Western Europe, Christianity is a despised fringe cult, Richard III is a hero, and there are vampires — the setup is sort of ridiculous, but it’s such a brilliantly written book you just take a deep breath and
suspendhang disbelief by the neck until it croaks. You might enjoy it.