If, as is often claimed, music is more able than other arts to give expression and form to our innermost feelings, let me single out the two examples I found most memorable of all. First, the ethereal extract from the finale of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in “Promised Land,” when Morse mounts the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Does opera ever rise above such glorious heights? Second, the extraordinarily moving “In Paradisum” from Fauré’s Requiem in “The Remorseful Day,” which includes the wonderful words “et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, aeternam habeas requiem” (“and with Lazarus, once a poor man, you may have eternal rest”). Inspector Morse would have opted for it at his funeral, as I shall at mine.

Did you have any discipline about the times you set aside for writing?

No.

Why did you kill off Morse?

I didn’t. He died of natural causes-a virtually inevitable consequence of a lifetime spent with “cigarettes and whiskey,” though not with “wild, wild women.” The cigarettes were always a problem, and Morse gave them up on innumerable occasions-usually every day. Alcohol, however, was a different matter, with real ale and single-malt scotch his favored tipples. Frequently, with Lewis, he sought to perpetuate the claim that he needed to drink in order to think, and indeed there was clearly some justification for such a claim. Whiskey, if drunk copiously, may have at least three possible effects: the legs may buckle, the speech become blurred, the brain befuddled. But Morse had no trouble with this last effect. His brain was sharper than ever, his imagination bolder, even his deep pessimism concerning the future of the planet a fraction modified. A longer-term effect was that his health grew worse, and he knew the score as well as any of the medical consultants whom he steadfastly refused to visit.

But there were, if I am honest, several other reasons why I decided to end the Morse era. First, it is my opinion that few crime writers manage to sustain their previously high level of output as they get older, and I had neither the ambition nor the need to try to join that select few. Second, my health was not robust, and it becomes progressively worse now. Third, I felt that I had said enough about the relationship between Morse and Lewis, and I realized that the repeated exemplifications of Morse’s character traits were becoming somewhat cliché ridden, with a good deal of the original freshness lost. Finally, I realized that I hadn’t many (any?) further plots left in my head to construct and develop. All right, we could have had a gentle ending, with Morse at last realizing his dreams of fair women, getting wed, and living happily ever after. But even my great hero Chandler made a sad mistake, in Playback, in my opinion, when providing a regular nuptial bed and a beautiful lady for Philip Marlowe.

You wrote only thirteen full-length Morse novels. How come there were thirty-three television episodes?

The Morse short stories I had written were too insubstantial for any two-hour treatment. After the novels were exhausted, I was asked by Kenny McBain if I could come up with four new plot outlines for the subsequent year’s quartet. I should have said no, since I was still a greenhorn in this TV business and had little idea what such a task would entail.

I wrote two excessively lengthy “outlines,” for “The Ghost in the Machine” and “Deceived by Flight,” both over sixty pages, as I recall. I then struggled through a third-and gave up on the fourth, realizing at last that my brain was quite unable to cope with such an assignment. From that point, screenplay writers were invited not just to adapt something I had written, but to produce original scripts. There were two dangers in this.

First, that new writers might not be fully aware of the firm characterization already established for both Morse and Lewis. Second, that perhaps some writers might think it appropriate, knowing the two characters well, to develop them according to their own lights and likings. For one or the other of these reasons, several promising stories could not be accepted. And since the copyright for Morse (and indeed for Lewis) remains and will remain with me, my role developed into that of an amateur consultant, occasionally with the directors but usually with the producers, especially Chris Burt. I hope and believe that such consultations and suggested revisions were of value.

What notice do you take of the critics?

One or two novelists I know would have no hesitation in answering, “No notice whatsoever, since I never read them.” I respect their independence of spirit, but I am not among them. When in the early days I got a mention anywhere, I eagerly sought out the review, and I felt deep satisfaction if it was even mildly commendatory, begging Macmillan to send me photocopies of similar mentions in their files. My style, I soon learned, was “mandarin” and “labyrinthine,” and although not quite sure of the significance of either epithet, I rather enjoyed them both. “Alas, the style… ” were the first three words of a shortish review once in The Times, and I read no more. I had a mixed bag of reviews from the pens of some distinguished critics, including A. N. Wilson, a writer I (once!) admired, who told his readers that he just could not read my pages. I was tempted to get my own back at him by never reading any more of his pages. On the other hand, I well remember treasuring (forgive me!) the judgment of Marcel Berlins, UK’s most respected crime critic, who wrote that Morse was now “a giant among fictional detectives.”

I wrote to only two reviewers. One was a local woman, herself an embryonic crime writer, I believe, who accused me (or was it Morse?) of being a “breast fetishist” in The Way Through the Woods. Although I could see little reason for being ashamed of such an interest in the female form, I did look quickly through the novel, finding only “… and Morse glanced appreciatively at the décolletage of her black dress as she bent forward with the wine list.”

The second was Christopher Wordsworth, a fine and perceptive critic, who (inadvertently, I'm sure) had given a red-hot hint about the identity of the murderer. Such lapses are most irritating and, I'm relieved to say, are considerably less common in the UK than in the US, where fuller reviews and detailed blurbs are not infrequently mines of information. Why on earth not allow readers to discover for themselves exactly what is going to happen? Yet I should be grateful that today reviews are taken more seriously than they were a few decades ago, when only two or three carefully crafted sentences would usually suffice-sometimes brilliantly so.

I well recall a film critic giving his judgment on the latest blockbusting biblical epic from Hollywood in four words: “God at his best.”

Let me add one final sentence. I never allowed anyone, not even my wife, Dorothy, to read my novels before they were dispatched to my publisher. It was only then that I was ready for any criticism. All writers of course will sometimes wince silently at some of their earlier offerings and wish to amend them. I remember, for example, once having Morse enjoying “a pint of the amber fluid” instead of “a pint of bitter.” The only changes I always made, when checking copy for omnibuses, etc., involved crossing out Lancia and substituting Jaguar, because ITV were unable to come up with an ancient Lancia and instead purchased, for some ridiculously giveaway price, a maroon-colored Jaguar Mark II, 1962, which, fully and luxuriously refurbished, recently changed hands for £150,000.

What really makes Morse tick?

Earlier I gave my own three greatest joys in life as crosswords, Wagner, and the poets, and vicariously I tried to exemplify these interests/hobbies/passions, both in the novels and in the TV programs.