Inspector Morse

Endeavour Morse
Morse (left) as played by John Thaw in the television adaptation, with Lewis (right) as played by Kevin Whately.
First appearance	Last Bus to Woodstock, 1975 novel The Dead of Jericho, 1987 TV
Last appearance	The Remorseful Day, 2000
Created by	Colin Dexter
Portrayed by	John Thaw
Episode count	33
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Police Detective
Title	Detective Chief Inspector
Nationality	English

Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse is a fictional character in a series of thirteen detective novels by British author Colin Dexter, as well as the 33 episode television series produced by Central Independent Television from 1987–2000, in which he was portrayed by John Thaw. Morse is a senior CID (Criminal Investigation Department) officer with the Thames Valley Police in Oxford, England. With a Jaguar car (originally a Lancia), a thirst for beer and a penchant for music (especially opera and Wagner), poetry, art, classics, English real ale, classic cars, and cryptic crossword puzzles, Morse presents a likeable persona, despite his sullen temperament.

Name and Family

Morse's first name, "Endeavour", was kept a secret until the end of Death is Now My Neighbour (traditionally Morse claimed that he should be called 'Morse' or joked that his first name was 'Inspector'). In the series it is noted that his reticence about his "Christian" name led to a public school (Stamford School) nickname of "Pagan". The origin of his name is the vessel HM Bark Endeavour, as Morse's mother was a Quaker (Quakers have a tradition of "virtue names") and his father was a fan of Captain James Cook. The author of the Morse novels, Colin Dexter, is a fan of cryptic crosswords, and Morse is named after champion solver Sir Jeremy Morse, one of Dexter´s arch-rivals as a clue-writer in the crossword world^{[citation needed]}.

During the episode Cherubim and Seraphim, we learn that Morse's parents divorced when he was 12, but that he remained with his mother, until her death 3 years later. He has a half-sister, Joyce, and a dreadful relationship[1] with his stepmother, Gwen. He claimed he only read poetry to annoy her and that her petty bullying almost drove him to suicide.

Habits and Personality

Morse is ostensibly the embodiment of white, male, upper-middle-class Englishness, with a set of prejudices and assumptions to match. He may thus be considered a late example of the gentleman detective, a staple of British detective fiction. This background is in sharp juxtaposition to the working class origins of his assistant, Lewis (named for another rival clue-writer, Mrs. B. Lewis); in the novels Lewis is Welsh, but this was altered to a northern (Geordie) background in the TV series. He is also middle-aged in the books.

Morse's relationships with authority, the establishment, bastions of power and the status quo are markedly ambiguous, as sometimes are his relations with women. Morse is frequently portrayed in the act of patronising women characters, to the extent that some feminist critics have argued that Morse is a misogynist.^[1]

Morse is a highly intelligent individual. He dislikes spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, demonstrated by the fact that in every personal or private document written to him he manages to point out at least one spelling mistake. He claims his approach to crime-solving is deductive and one of his key tenets is that "there is a 50 per cent chance that the last person to see the victim alive was the murderer". In reality it is the pathologists who deduce, Morse uses intuition and his fantastic memory to get to the killer.

Career

Although details of Morse's career are deliberately kept vague, it is hinted that as a schoolboy he won a scholarship to study at St John's College, Oxford. He lost the scholarship as the result of poor academic performance, which in turn resulted from a failed love affair (mentioned in the series at the end of "The Last Enemy" and in the novel The Riddle of the Third Mile). Forced to leave the University, he entered the Army, and on leaving it, joined the Police. He often reflects on renowned scholars (such as A. E. Housman) who, like himself, failed to get academic degrees from Oxford.

Novels

The novels in the series are:

• Last Bus to Woodstock (1975)
• Last Seen Wearing (1976)
• The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1977)
• Service of All the Dead (1979)
• The Dead of Jericho (1981)
• The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983)
• The Secret of Annexe 3 (1986)
• The Wench is Dead (1989)
• The Jewel That Was Ours (1991)
• The Way Through the Woods (1992)
• The Daughters of Cain (1994)
• Death is Now My Neighbour (1996)
• The Remorseful Day (1999)

Inspector Morse also appears in several stories in Dexter's short story collection, Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (1993, expanded edition 1994).

Dexter killed off Morse in his last book, The Remorseful Day. Morse dies in hospital from complications of his neglected diabetes, a disease Colin Dexter shares.

Television

The Inspector Morse novels were made into a TV series (also called Inspector Morse) for the British TV channel ITV. The series was made by Zenith Productions for Central (a company later acquired by Carlton) and comprises 33 two-hour episodes (100 minutes excluding commercials) — twenty more episodes than there are novels — produced between 1987 and 2000. The last episode was adapted from the final novel, The Remorseful Day, which incorporated the main character's surname.

Radio

An occasional BBC Radio 4 series (for the Saturday Play) was made starring the voices of John Shrapnel as Morse and Robert Glenister as Lewis. The series was written by Guy Meredith and directed by Ned Chaillet. Episodes included: The Wench is Dead (28 March 1992); Last Seen Wearing (28 May 1994); and The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (10 February 1996).

Further reading

• Allen, Paul and Jan, Endeavoring to Crack the Morse Code (Inspector Morse) Exposure Publishing (2006)
• Bishop, David, The Complete Inspector Morse: From the Original Novels to the TV Series London: Reynolds & Hearn (2006) ISBN 1-9052871-3-5
• Bird, Christopher, The World of Inspector Morse: A Complete A-Z Reference for the Morse Enthusiast Foreword by Colin Dexter London: Boxtree (1998) ISBN 0752221175
• Goodwin, Cliff, Inspector Morse Country : An Illustrated Guide to the World of Oxford's famous detective London: Headline (2002) ISBN 0755310640
• Leonard, Bill, The Oxford of Inspector Morse: Films Locations History Location Guides, Oxford (2004) ISBN 0-9547671-1-X
• Richards, Anthony and Philip Attwell, The Oxford of Inspector Morse
• Richards, Anthony, Inspector Morse On Location
• Sanderson, Mark, The Making of Inspector Morse Pan Macmillan (1995) ISBN 0330344188

References

External links

• Morse's Oxford Online Tour (created by Oxford University)