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Portrait of Robert Barnard Photo: United News/Popperfoto via Getty Images (1980)

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Barnard, Robert

Robert Barnard was an English crime writer and scholar of international fame. He was born in Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. In 1956, he went up to Oxford to read literature, possibly encouraged by his father who wrote unremarkable romances and young adult books. After graduating in 1959, Barnard taught at university in Australia 1961–1966. He married Louise Tabor there in 1963. They were making p...

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Literary figures

Gideon Fell

Gender: Male

The enormous Dr Fell, whose physical traits are modelled on G.K. Chesterton, is one of crime fiction’s foremost problem-solvers when it comes to ‘locked-room’ mysteries and other ‘impossible’ crimes. He also works on an ever-growing doctoral thesis about English drinking habits from bygone days, he likes his beer and is married – although his wife is only mentioned in a few of John Dickson Carr’s...

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