Two of my passions go hand in hand. I am an evangelical proponent of both traditional British beer and murder mystery fiction. While they intersect a lot, the writing of Colin Dexter is perhaps where the Venn diagram is at its most pure.

Dexter’s Chief Inspecter Morse is an amalgam of Dexters own passions and some less positive traits the author promised were not to be found within himself. A passion for well kept real ale was top of the list.

The books and to an extent the tv adaptation[1] are filled with 1970’s and 80’s middle England pub culture. Pints filled direct from the barrel, the lazy waft of cigarette smoke through the bar, pub gardens overlooking the Isis , day drinking followed by afternoon closing, and a round system that never sees Morse pay his way.

Morse inhabits a composite English pub scene that stretches from the first novel in 1975 to the last TV episode in 2000. The TV prequels and sequels take this even further but of course they can’t avoid being spiced with our current or more recent mores and sensibilities.

There is an accusation of over romanticism that is often leveled at depictions of pubs and drinking in British television and literature. I don’t think that can be said of Morse as in both book and TV he ends up drinking himself to death. Inevitably the books portray the internal battle better than the TV shows but it’s there in both. While the wonderful 90’s adaptation[2] of H.E. Bates Darling Buds of May chose to ignore the mortal ramification of hedonism where by Pa Larkin suffers a terrible heart attack in the books but David Jason’s Pa tipples and feasts away forever, in the Dexter world one’s actions do in the end come back to haunt one.

In 2019 I spent a wonderful night in Oxford. I stayed at Jesus College and in the end was mercifully without chaperone. Originally there had been plans for beer writer Tim Hampson to host me, then one of my Haslett cousins . All these plans fell through which left me, the Dexter nerd, free to do Oxford in the footsteps of Colin. I drank pints from Canal Reach to the Turf, I missed the last bus to Woodstock, I wandered the ancient lanes around the Bodleian Library in the dark. I ate scotch eggs and gammon, chips and eggs. It was the sort of perfect night of solo drinking that I would love to repeat and know in my heart I never will nor could.

I think the intent behind this session was relief from reality. Perhaps my choice is not quite right. Every time I read Dexter’s wonderful books I am reminded that while I am not a genius detective I am an introvert who is ‘unlucky in love’ , who loves quiet pints of real ale in old pubs and single malts in my favourite chair and who is every bit as mortal as old Morse.  Fiction it may be , but the ends have all been written.

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[1] According to Dexter the now sober John Thaw asked for the drinking to be toned down in the tv series. There was still plenty to go round.

[2] The less said about the horrific 2021 adaptation The Larkins the better.