Crispin, Edmund

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery, an English pianist and organist, composer and author of detective stories born in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire. He was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, London, and St. John’s College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages in 1943. While in Oxford he befriended Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, and he travelled around Europe, mostly Germany, between the wars. He taught at Shrewsbury School until 1945 when he turned to composing works for choir and orchestra as well as for a long list of British films.