User talk:Read Detective Stories

September 2023
Hello, I'm Fragrant Peony. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, John Lawton (author), but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at referencing for beginners. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Fragrant Peony (talk) 05:58, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Fragrant Peony, The source of the information is the information given at the end of two of John Lawton's own books: the "Stuff" in Friends and Traitors states that he went to the same school as the actor Alan Bates, which was easy to identify; and the "Historical Note" in Blue Rondo mentions his campaigning for the Labour Party in the 1959 General Election. (As well as his distaste for Tony Blair's New Labour, which I didn't mention.) The information that Belper is Shirley Foxx's original home town is in the novels themselves, where Old Flames and Friends and Traitors deal at some length with her conflicted feelings. I'll take a look at Referencing for Beginners. But it's not a big deal. I love the novels, and the way they interlock with each other and with history, plus all the literary references and names (Canon Chasuble, Eynsford Hill, Leigh Hunt, Burne Jones, and the ever-present Magersfontein Lugg from Margery Allingham, and probably some I've missed). So am mildly curious about John Lawton and why he wrote the novels, and I trust will write more. A very different trajectory, I suspect, from John Le Carre. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time adding to his Wikipedia entry just for the sake of it. I was twiddling my thumbs on a rainy afternoon..... Read Detective Stories (talk) 08:18, 9 September 2023 (UTC)