The Men with the forgotten Pens: Walter Tyrer

 

Walter Tyrer 1956

My previous post on Walter Tyrer and the Sexton Blake novel resulted in me getting an email from keith Chapman - it's always nice to hear from Keith, the man behind Chap O'Keefe, author of so many great westerns. 

Now as well as penning all those great westerns, Keith can claim a lifetime working in the publishing industry, and can always be relied upon  to supply interesting anecdotes.

Keith tells me that Walter Tyrer was not in fact a pen name, but rather a prolific English writer who wrote under not only his own name but many others.

Here's what Keith had to say:

"Walter Tyrer" (1900-1978)  was the man's real name, although I do know he wrote under others, such as "J. T. Lang". He used this one when working for Micron/G. M. Smith, probably to thwart any possible complications should word leak back to Fleetway who were his main employers.  While I was editing at Micron, he contributed scripts for their 64-page romance and western comic-book "libraries" (clones of various Fleetway titles and forerunners to DCT's Commando) and short stories for Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine. He also offered to do rewrites of his Sexton Blake novels for the latter, but I rejected that as I wanted the mag to be "all new" except for the Edgar Wallace reprints."

Keith went onto to direct to me an article at the Sexton Blake blog HERE.

It turns out that Tyrer passed away in 1978, and had been born in Liverpool in 1900 - during the second world war he served as an ARP warden, and during the previous war had served with the Royal Navy. A prolific writer, he wrote more than 30 novels for the Sexton Blake Library alone.

Keith also informed me that Tyrer had contributed scenarios for TV's long running soap, Coronation Street.

Biographical information on Tyrer is slight: Born in 1900, he sold his first story  in 1921 and by 1947 had sold at least 20,000,000 words of juvenile fiction. He died in 1978, aged 78.

You can find a vintage Tyrer story at the Beat to a Pulp webzine HERE

Sexton Blake on the HP trail

 

Sexton Blake and the secondhand books incident

I picked up this old pulp, one of the Sexton Blake Library, largely because the title amused me. I found the book in Cardiff's excellent Troutmark Books which is situated in the Castle Arcade. The character of Sexton Blake of course came about in 1893 in the Halfpenny Marvel paper. The character owed much to Sherlock Holmes - in fact he's  been called the poor man's Sherlock Holmes - and was often drawn to resemble Doyle's most famous creation.

This particular book was published in 1952 and written by Walter Tyrer, a man who wrote a fair number of Sexton Blake adventures. I think the name is likely a pen name but I cant find anything out about the writer on the internet other than a list of titles he penned.

There's a rather good blog HERE that reviews many of the Sexton Blake adventures but the blog doesn't seem to be updated on a regular basis - pity.

Together with the Sexton Blake book I also picked up a bunch of old paperbacks as well as several issues of Warlord Comic. I do love browsing in secondhand books shops and Cardiff's Troutmark Books is an excellent store. I'd recommend a visit to anyone who finds themselves in Cardiff. You'll find it in the Castle Arcade which is across the road from Cardiff Castle.

Sexton Blake and The More Information Case

Recently I posted a feature about an old pulp book from the Sexton Blake Library that I picked up in Cardiff's Excellent Troutmark Books. The piece is HERE and in the piece I wondered about author Walter Tyrer. The piece was read by Archive friend, Keith Chapman who wrote a piece on the author for the Bookshelves and Brown Ale Blog.

Once a member of the editorial team at the Sexton Blake Library and later editor of the Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine, Keith now writes westerns in the Black Horse series under the name Chap O`Keefe and has recently been involved in re-issuing his O`Keefe titles as e-books (www.blackhorsewesterns.com/feb14 ).


 the informed article can be read HERE.

Sexton Blake and the secondhand books incident

I picked up this old pulp, one of the Sexton Blake Library, largely because the title amused me. I found the book in Cardiff's excellent Troutmark Books which is situated in the Castle Arcade. The character of Sexton Blake of course came about in 1893 in the Halfpenny Marvel paper. The character owed much to Sherlock Holmes - in fact he's  been called the poor man's Sherlock Holmes - and was often drawn to resemble Doyle's most famous creation.

This particular book was published in 1952 and written by Walter Tyrer, a man who wrote a fair number of Sexton Blake adventures. I think the name is likely a pen name but I cant find anything out about the writer on the internet other than a list of titles he penned.

There's a rather good blog HERE that reviews many of the Sexton Blake adventures but the blog doesn't seem to be updated on a regular basis - pity.

Together with the Sexton Blake book I also picked up a bunch of old paperbacks as well as several issues of Warlord Comic. I do love browsing in secondhand books shops and Cardiff's Troutmark Books is an excellent store. I'd recommend a visit to anyone who finds themselves in Cardiff. You'll find it in the Castle Arcade which is across the road from Cardiff Castle.

Sexton Blake - The Vampire Moon and other stories

I'm a big fan of radio and like Stephen Fry I'm starting to believe that BBC Radio Four is the only good thing about modern Britain - that's not strictly true and Radio Four Extra (previously known as Radio 7) is actually the station I listen to most. It's got the mixture of drama and comedy just right and you'll never hear any pop music which suits me just fine, as the older I get the less tolerance I have for the inane ditties that pass for music these days - I heard kissed a girl and I didn't like it. And it's not just getting old - modern pop music is so twee, vapid - I mean it's come to something when my kids tell me to turn my music down - Dad. turn that row off we can't hear Jedwood!

However I've gone into grumpy old man mode and am straying from the point...

There's something about well produced radio that allows the listener to get right into the story - anyone interested can find enough old time radio on the web to last several lifetimes. And collecting on CD is easier than ever, after all most old time radio is in the public domain and there are some great companies producing some great discs, with informative packaging - sorry just sticking a label on a disc doesn't do it for me.

Sexton Blake and the Vampire Moon and other stories, is an official release from BBC Worldwide and contains three episodes from a series that was originally broadcast 1967, as well as a bonus episode from 1930 which is one of Britain's earliest surviving drama recordings.

Sexton Blake - The name that spells DOOM for VILLAINY!

These are not readings of the classic stories but full cast dramatisations and even after all this time they still manage to create a believable,if pulpish world, with their sound scape. Sexton Blake first appeared in the same year and month that Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in the Swiss Alps.

Sexton Blake first appeared in Halfpenny Marvel and like Holmes he resided in Baker Street but where he differed from Doyle's cerebral sleuth was that he was much more of an action man - the character's penny dreadful style adventures enthralled readers for years.

It was in 1939 that Sexton made the transition to the wireless radio as part of the BBC's Lucky Dip series and the show was a great success. Film actor George Curzon took the title role and the scripts were originally written by then popular mystery scribe, Ernest Dudley. Scripts would also come from Paul Temple creator, Francis Durbridge. The character pretty much carried on in this way for a couple of decades, stiff upper lip, old boy, and it wasn't until the swinging Sixties that the character was given a major overhaul. And it is from this period that the episodes on the CD are taken - there are three great episodes from the 1967 series which starred William Franklin as a Sexton Blake who was now equal parts Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. The series started out on the Light Program before moving to the newly formed Radio Four.

As a nice little bonus this disc contains a rare recording from 1939 with Arthur Wonter in the title role and it is interesting to compare the two versions of the same character