Cyril Raymond Howard Shaw (born September 1934) is a British teacher and writer, specialising in crime fiction. He is a former head of history at Harrow School. [1]
Shaw was born in Bristol in September 1934, [2] and educated at Taunton School and at Queen's College, Oxford, where he read modern history. He was commissioned in the Royal Artillery during his national service after which he taught at Harrow School from 1961-1997. In 1966, Shaw was elected a schoolmaster fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. [1]
In 1968, Shaw produced The Levellers in the Seminar Studies in History series. He has subsequently written a number of well-received [3] works of mystery fiction, published initially under the pseudonym "Colin Howard", drawing on his knowledge of the English public school and the Oxford University college. Death of a Don (1982) was a Mystery Guild selection, and was later re-published in the U.K. in the Black Dagger Crime series. Of the book, Christopher Wordsworth commented "Cambridge may incubate the best traitors but Oxford can pride itself on fiction's best corpses". [4]
William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).
Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring the police commander and poet, Adam Dalgliesh.
Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt, FBA was an English educational psychologist and geneticist who also made contributions to statistics. He is known for his studies on the heritability of IQ.
Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was an English Catholic priest, theologian, author, and radio broadcaster. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a high reputation as a classicist, Knox was ordained as a priest of the Church of England in 1912. He was a fellow and chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford until he resigned from those positions following his conversion to Catholicism in 1917. Knox became a Catholic priest in 1918, continuing in that capacity his scholarly and literary work.
Black Mask was a pulp magazine first published in April 1920 by the journalist H. L. Mencken and the drama critic George Jean Nathan. It is most well-known today for launching the hardboiled crime subgenre of mystery fiction, publishing now-classic works by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich, Paul Cain, Carroll John Daly, and others.
Christopher Wordsworth was an English intellectual and a bishop of the Anglican Church.
Charles Merivale was an English historian and churchman, for many years dean of Ely Cathedral. He was one of the main instigators of the inaugural Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race which took place at Henley in 1829.
George Douglas Howard Cole was an English political theorist, economist, historian, and novelist. As a believer in common ownership of the means of production, he theorised guild socialism. He belonged to the Fabian Society and was an advocate for the co-operative movement.
Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–49) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth.
Dame Margaret Isabel Cole was an English socialist politician, writer and poet. She wrote several detective stories jointly with her husband, G. D. H. Cole. She went on to hold important posts in London government after the Second World War.
Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.
Edward Ernest Bowen was a first-class cricketer, footballer, and an influential schoolmaster at Harrow School from 1859 until his death, and the author of the Harrow school song, "Forty Years On". He was notable in football for winning the first two FA Cup finals with the Wanderers.
Charles Wordsworth was Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane in Scotland. He was a classical scholar, and taught at public schools in England and Scotland. He was a rower, cricketer, and athlete and he instigated both the University cricket match in 1826 and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in 1829.
John Wordsworth was an English Anglican bishop and classical scholar. He was Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1883 to 1885, and Bishop of Salisbury from 1885 to 1911.
Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth was founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and she funded and founded St Hugh's College. She was also an author, sometimes writing under the name Grant Lloyd.
Robert William Victor Gittings CBE, was an English writer, biographer, BBC Radio producer, playwright and poet. In 1978, he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Older Hardy.
Seminar Studies in History is a book series for undergraduate and younger students that aims to bridge the gap between the monograph and the full size university textbook. The series was established in 1968 by history teacher Patrick Richardson, and was one of the first series of academic history books to include documentary sources as standard.
The Hypocrites' Club was one of the student clubs at Oxford University in England. Its motto in Greek, from an Olympian Ode by Pindar, was Water is best. This led to the members being called Hypocrites, due to the fact that beer, wine and spirits were the chosen drinks.