Colin Watson

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Colin Watson


Born
in Croydon, Surrey, The United Kingdom
February 01, 1920

Died
January 17, 1983

Genre


Colin Watson was educated at the Whitgift School in South Croydon, London. During his career as a journalist he worked in London and Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was a leader-writer for Kemsley Newspapers.

His book Hopjoy Was Here (1962) received the Silver Dagger Award. He was married, with three children, and lived in Lincolnshire. After retiring from journalism he designed silver jewellery.

As well as a series of humorous detective novels set in the imaginary town of Flaxborough, featuring Inspector Purbright, Watson also wrote and later revised a study of detective stories and thrillers called Snobbery with Violence.

Average rating: 3.94 · 4,869 ratings · 835 reviews · 64 distinct worksSimilar authors
Coffin, Scarcely Used (Flax...

3.68 avg rating — 1,236 ratings — published 1958 — 30 editions
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Bump in the Night (Flaxboro...

4.04 avg rating — 597 ratings — published 1960 — 20 editions
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Hopjoy Was Here (Flaxboroug...

3.98 avg rating — 475 ratings — published 1962 — 29 editions
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Lonelyheart 4122 (Flaxborou...

4.25 avg rating — 412 ratings — published 1967 — 26 editions
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Charity Ends at Home (Flaxb...

4.05 avg rating — 370 ratings — published 1968 — 15 editions
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The Flaxborough Crab (Flaxb...

4.09 avg rating — 280 ratings — published 1969 — 19 editions
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Whatever's Been Going on at...

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 265 ratings — published 1982 — 13 editions
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Broomsticks Over Flaxboroug...

3.97 avg rating — 251 ratings — published 1972 — 11 editions
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The Naked Nuns (Flaxborough...

3.92 avg rating — 250 ratings — published 1975 — 20 editions
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Plaster Sinners (Flaxboroug...

4.17 avg rating — 194 ratings — published 1980 — 12 editions
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More books by Colin Watson…
Coffin, Scarcely Used Bump in the Night Hopjoy Was Here Lonelyheart 4122 Charity Ends at Home The Flaxborough Crab Broomsticks Over Flaxborough
(12 books)
by
3.95 avg rating — 4,703 ratings

Quotes by Colin Watson  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Real life is disobliging. People like to think, or feel, in black and white. Having to assess the relative values of all those intermediate greys is tiresome and perplexing.”
Colin Watson, Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and Their Audience
tags: greys

“Charging commercial institutions with failure to educate public taste is an indulgence from which intellectuals will only be deterred when they grasp that a non-existant contract can be neither breached nor enforced. If commerce is to be indicted for anything, it can only be for commercialism, and whether that is a crime or not is a political question.”
Colin Watson, Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and Their Audience

“To tell the truth, it is regarding the physical side of marriage that I have always been apprehensive...There so seldom seems to be enough of it," said Miss Teatime.”
Colin Watson

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