Paul Temple And The Alex Affair

Oct 3, 2024 1:16 PM

Author:Francis Durbridge,Peter Coke,Marjorie Westbury,Full Cast

For thirty years the fictional crime novelist and detective Paul Temple, together with his Fleet Street journalist wife Steve, solved case after case in one of BBC Radio's most popular series. They inhabited a sophisticated world of chilled cocktails and fast cars, a world where Sir Graham Forbes, of Scotland Yard, usually needed Paul's help with his latest tricky case. This adventure begins with a body on a train, the word 'Alex' scrawled on the compartment window, and the discovery of a visiting card bearing the name 'Mrs Trevelyan'. More bodies follow, and the two names recur on each occasion. Paul's attempts to unravel the mystery take him to a psychiatrist's consulting room, a rendezvous in London's dockland, a hotel in Canterbury, and many other places before the denouement in a deserted mill and the Temples' elegant flat in London.

Reviews

One of the best biographies of Dmitri Shostakovich I have read

—— Maxim Shostakovich

Compelling ... a portrait of a creative artist tormented and harried by the random assaults of Stalinism

—— Financial Times

Persuasively argued and forceful ... A valid, politically driven reconsideration of the composer's works

—— New York Times Review of Books

With passionate integrity, MacDonald fastidiously builds a case to rival the most compellingly labyrinthine detective investigation. Now the great music of Shostakovich will be heard anew

—— Q

Much-needed - a very fascinating insight

—— Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys)

Anyone concerned with Soviet music, twentieth-century music, arts in politics, and politics in art, will be interested in this book

—— Gunther Schuller

Fascinating ... Manages, better than any previous publication, to make connections between Shostakovich's work and the works of other Soviet artists whom he admired and was influenced by

—— Times Educational Supplement

A considerable tour de force of musical and social analysis which will hold its own for some time to come

—— Norman Lebrecht

Harrowing... riveting... superb

—— Classic CD

The best biography of the composer available... has broken new ground by fusing biography with political analysis. A formal lesson to Western writers on post-1917 Russia, whether their subject is music or life itself

—— Andrei Navrozov

Superb ... This compassionate and very knowledgeable book is humbling in its understanding of how far an individual can be pushed by the coercive forces of a grotesque, perhaps insane, authority

—— Sydney Morning Herald

A monumental achievement

—— City Limits

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