St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend

9-11 August 2024

by Lizzie Sirett

The first time I attended the St Hilda’s conference was in 1997. It was my first experience of a crime fiction conference and I loved it. So much so, that I attended for the next 23 years. 
Then covid struck.
Because of parking restriction during the building work they were doing I hadn’t recently attended, but I did this year. Firstly, the building alteration to the college are simply magnificent. No don't panic as you can see from the picture above, the buildings haven’t been changed, just more have been added.

As in previous years, the weekend conference has a theme.
For this the 31st year the theme was

 A Dance to the Music of Crime
the Artful path to murder.

After the welcome at 5pm, we all gathered to meet Joan Cockin’s Granddaughter,
see photo left with Triona. And a chance to buy
Deadly Earnest.
Recently re-published by Galileo Publishers.

Afterwards we  all made our way to dinner, held as in previous years in the beautiful wood panelled dining room in the building you see above. 

  

Rev. Richard Coles has been a chancellor of the university of Northampton since 2017 and is a former Honorary Chaplain to the Worshipful company of Leathersellers.

His first novel in the series. The Canon Clement Mysteries
was a number one bestseller

www.richardcoles.com

On Saturday after a welcome by Sarah Hillary, the first speaker was 
Mark Billingham.

I would like to say that I enjoyed his enjoyment of country and western music in relation to his protagonist, and to a degree I did, until he trashed  jazz. Far too much bloody opera and jazz, if you ask me, he said.
Being a great lover of both opera and jazz, I decided to tune out at that point. My friend David Whittle, also a jazz and opera fan, booed loudly, so I joined in.

Following Mark there were talks by

  Erin Kelly who spoke on: Murder on the Dance Floor.
Doug Johnstone: A Lifetime of Dancing About Architecture
Saima Mir: From Bollywood to Bestseller
Lucie Whitehouse: Is it Different for Girls?

The 5-6pm slot was a talk by David Whittle on Edmund Crispin. David has provided…...

‘A Speaker’s Perspective....’

I was thrilled and flattered in equal measure when asked to speak at this year’s St Hilda’s weekend. The first time I lectured about Edmund Crispin was at the second such event in 1995. To be honest, looking back I’m surprised I knew enough about him to give a talk at the time as I’d only just started my researches for the biography I eventually published.

This year’s theme, A Dance to the Music of Crime, couldn’t be more suited to a writer who was also a composer under his real name of Bruce Montgomery. And I’m an admirer of Anthony Powell’s great novel sequence, whose title (after Poussin’s painting, of course) provided the pun in the year’s theme.

Having fought my way into Oxford off the M40, a warm welcome was provided by the organisers, and it was lovely to be reacquainted with Jean Harker who had invited me in 1995. I was able to remind the Rev. Richard Coles of the time I conducted him in a choir in Boston Parish Church when he was the curate there, and I was particularly pleased to meet Jake Lamar whose jazz-age novel Viper’s Dream I reviewed enthusiastically in Mystery People last year and which subsequently won this year’s CWA Historical Dagger.

Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the theme, there was a wide variety of talks. Joan Cockin’s grand-daughter provided a welcome introduction to the extraordinary life and times of this re-discovered author that had many of us scuttling off to buy her recently re-published novels. On Saturday morning Mark Billingham, in Songs in the Key of Murder, drew up battle lines after making disobliging remarks about the influence of jazz in crime (‘far too much bloody jazz, if you ask me’ he wrote in the outline for his talk). Jake Lamar provided a robust defence of the genre in his Once Upon a Time in Harlem on Sunday. Mind you, sitting with Mark, Doug Johnstone and Mick Herron amongst others on Saturday night in a neighbouring pub showed just how much the three know about rock (this from someone whose teenage musical rebellion – I was a cathedral chorister – peaked with The Carpenters and Barry Manilow). It was a novel experience to be ejected from a pub with sundry best-selling authors – not, sadly, because of bad behaviour but merely because it was closing time (Crispin would have been proud of us).

Those enthusiasts in attendance were certainly spoilt for choice. Other talks ranged from ballet to Bollywood, opera to Wimsey. Philip Gooden’s murder mystery challenge, Murder Con Brio, followed the PD James Dinner and featured some deliciously over-acting authors. It was entirely appropriate, following his comments about jazz, that Mark Billingham got his comeuppance and was unmasked as the villain.

 If you haven’t been to the St Hilda’s weekend, I encourage you to give it a go. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxed mix of enthusiasts and writers in a gorgeous setting. Where else, for instance, would you get someone (in this case me) trying to explain to someone who grew up in The Bronx (Jake Lamar) exactly what the Carry On films were?* And all in the name of crime.  * In case you didn’t know, under his real name Edmund Crispin  composed the scores for the early Carry On films

Following drinks on the lawn on the Saturday evening The PD James dinner was served in the beautiful dining room. It has become a tradition for a murder mystery to be executed during the dinner. All the diners have to do is identify the murderer.

I own to be complete rubbish at this but I enjoy watching the people from the top table preforming, They are all without exception brilliant.

 The after dinner speaker was Philip Gooden, who lives in Bath.  He writes both fiction and non fiction. His mystery novels include the Nick Revill series, a sequence based in Elizabethan London and set around Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

The third Book in the serries, The Pale Companion, was shortlisted  for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award. He is the author of The Guinness Guide to Better English and the editor of The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes. Each of his Nick Revill mysteries revolves around a Shakespearean play mirroring life - in Sleep of Death the play was Hamlet, in this offering it is Troilus and Cressida.

 Sunday brought us

Ellie Griffiths, 

author of the series of crime novels set in England’s Norfolk County and featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway.

The first in the series, Crossing Places, featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway earned a good deal of praise both in Griffiths’ native country, England, and in the U.S. Norfolk Count. The Literary Review termed it “a cleverly plotted and extremely Interesting first novel, highly recommended. 

Since then, Elly has written fourteen further novels in the series. Recently she has written a second series set in Brighton in the 1950’s featuring magician Max Mephisto and DI Stephens. There are seven books in the new series, and an eighth scheduled to be published October 2025.

 Elly said she wrote her first book when she was eleven, it was called The Hair of the Dog,  which, she said must have been something her parents talked about. But in her mind it was to make something better.  She never finished it. Her first four books were published under her real name which is Domenica de Rosa, which in Italian means Sunday of the rose.  She always felt it was a writer’s name, and said she practiced writing her signature.  Although she has an Italian father she was born in London.

After graduating from  King’s College London she worked in a library and then got a job as a publicity assistant at HarperCollins.  She said she  loved working in publishing and eventually became Editorial Director for children’s books. She talked about the enjoyment of writing children’s books and yes, people are killed in her children’s books, but she said the thing to do is just to kill the teachers, not the children.

She talked about her meeting her husband Andy in a city wine bar. He was with a group of lawyers’, they got chatting,  and he told her didn't want to be a lawyer, what he really wanted to be was an archaeologist. She thought, Oh! how sweet, and decided to marry him. 

It was when she was on maternity leave that she started to write her first book, which would become her first published novel, Return to the Italian Quarter.

She had decided not to go back to HarperCollins after her maternity period was up, but was offered ‘A lovely treat’ to edit letterland, which was created to teach phonics using a story-based approach. The set-up was weird, she said, and can only be described as a poisoned chalice. Example: for the letter ‘F’ Fireman Fred’s Hose fits firm in his fist. She did try to point out that some people might see a double meaning there. However, she did write few herself - Poor Peter’s Perfect Pizza and several others.

But the birth of Ruth Galloway was when walking across Titchwell Marsh, Andy mentioned Prehistoric man and said he thought that marshland was sacred, because it’s neither land nor sea, but something in-between, a kind of bridge to the afterlife. As he said these words said Elly, ‘the entire plot of The Crossing Places appeared, fully formed, in my head and, walking towards me out of the mist, I saw Dr Ruth Galloway. And I knew everything about her. I didn’t think that this new book was significantly different from my ‘Italy’ books but, when she read it, my agent said, ‘This is crime. You need a crime name.’ She’d thought of taking her grandmother’s name Helena, but somehow she became Elly.  She recalled this in a later interview with Jane Wood and asked her ‘how did I get to be Elly?’  Jane replied ‘I think it looked a bit tidier’. Hence Elly Griffiths.

She had a two book deal, but was careful to leave the first book with an emotional cliff-hanger. Those of us who have avidly devoured the fifteen books in this series must, like me, be wondering and hoping, will there be more?

www.ellygriffiths.co.uk

My thanks go to the committee. Jake Kerridge, Jean Buchanan,
Mick Herron,  Jane Casey, Carolyn Kirby,
Abir Mukherjee and in particular Sarah Hilary 

who did a marvellous job seemingly to be
everywhere the whole weekend.

As it says in the Brochure,  the St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend is like no other.
It has drawn readers and writers from all over the world for thirty years.

It is truly unique. If you haven’t yet been you are missing
something special.

Home | St Hilda's College Oxford