OBITUARY: Ellis Peters | The Independent OBITUARY: Ellis Peters Sunday 15 October 1995 23:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Ellis Peters wrote "Mystoricals". More than any other writer of the past half-century, British or American, Peters - or rather Edith Pargeter, under her best-known pseudonym - popularised this, one of the most enthralling of all of detective fiction's many sub-genres: the mystery set in historical times. While not the form's creator (that honour must go to the late Lillian de la Torre, the American crime-writer who cleverly transformed Dr Johnson and Boswell into an 18th-century Holmes and Watson, during the course of over 30 highly ingenious short stories), Pargeter was still hugely successful, and this success not only propelled many other writers into trying their hand at similar scenarios, but actually influenced the commercial direction taken by her last publisher. For a period, in the early 1990s, the crime list of Headline was almost entirely devoted to "Mystoricals" set in one era or another.

At a time (the 1970s) when there was a strong vogue for Victorian sleuths, early or late (from Ben Healey's rumbustious Bow Street Runner Jeremy Sturrock to Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb or Donald Thomas's Sergeant Verity), Pargeter deliberately, almost defiantly, went her own way, setting a tale of murder and mystery a full 700 years before then, during the bloody civil war between Stephen and Maud: a fearsome era when, as the ancient chronicler so tellingly put it, "Christ and all his angels slept". This was her 1977 novel A Morbid Taste For Bones (Pargeter had a genius for a clever or arresting title; three others of note being Black is the Colour of My True-Love's Heart, Mourning Raga and A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs). This, as she termed it, "Medieval whodunnit", written at an age (63) when most women of her generation were just starting to enjoy their retirement, attracted attention and gained enthusiastic reviews.

Others followed, all featuring the tough, compassionate but immensely pragmatic (because ex-man-of-blood) Brother Cadfael (pronounced Cad-vile). All were set in or around Shrewsbury, creating in the end, via 20 or so books published over a period of nearly two decades, a minor tourist industry; that part of Shropshire being inevitably dubbed "Brother Cadfael" country, in much the same way that Tyneside is "Catherine Cookson" and the Yorkshire Dales "James Herriot" country. In making her monkish sleuth (whose specialist knowledge of herbs and simples proved the undoing of many a wolfish wight) an inhabitant of Shrewsbury's Benedictine Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul, Edith Pargeter did not stray far from her roots. She was born, in 1913, in the shadow of the Wrekin, to the east of Shrewsbury in the tiny hamlet of Horsehay, now virtually submerged into the inelegant sprawl of Telford New Town - in which, on a brand-new and pleasantly landscaped estate, Pargeter resided in Cadfael- donated comfort during her latter days.

She was something of a polymath (musicologist, historian, an authority on the Czech language) yet largely self-educated; she never attended university. Instead she spent seven years (1933-40) as a chemist's assistant and wrote in her spare time - successfully, almost from the start. Nineteen thirty-six was Edith Pargeter's year of miracles. During its course, she appeared in the downmarket 20-Story Magazine and at the same time the thumpingly upmarket Good Housekeeping. She also published two novels, one of which was her first historical, Hortensius, Friend of Nero. At this time the publishers Herbert Jenkins, an industrious supplier of popular, entertaining but essentially undemanding dross to the library trade, unintentionally acted as a kind of nursery for tiro writers. The adventure novelist Ralph Hammond Innes largely taught himself to write, producing cheap thrillers for Jenkins, and Pargeter followed the same path, turning out, as "Jolyon Carr", a number of mainly woman-in-peril suspensers.

Here, working for the chemist paid off, giving her (like Agatha Christie in a similar position during the Great War) a useful knowledge of poisons, which she deployed to good effect in Murder in the Dispensary (1938: syrup of chloral) as well as, under yet another pseudonym, "John Redfern", The Victim Needs a Nurse (1940: aconite). She had a good war. Not only as a Petty Officer in the WRNS, awarded the British Empire Medal "for meritorious service" before the conflict actually ended, but as a writer, publishing her first best-seller, the lightly fictionalised diary of a Wren teleprinter operator at the heart of great events, She Goes To War (1942), a popular and a critical success.

This spurred her on to her first major series, the "Eighth Champion of Christendom" trilogy - Lame Crusade (1945), Reluctant Odyssey (1946), Warfare Accomplished (1947) - which describe, in remarkable detail, the Everyman-ish journey of Jim Benison from Dunkirk (as private) to the fall of Singapore (corporal) and finally to Luneberg Heath (sergeant). Contemporary critics were baffled at a young woman's describing with such skill and gritty realism complex technicalities of modern warfare as well as far- flung theatres (the Libyan Desert, Malaya, the Caen-Falaise Gap) to which she had never been. Years later, Pargeter gleefully admitted that, although a certain amount of the detail had come from her own Signals occupation and from friends, most had simply been mugged up from on-the-spot newspaper reports.

She was, like Cadfael (for whom she had a decided tendresse, although nowhere near to the extent that Dorothy Sayers, say, doted on Peter Wimsey), an arch-pragmatist, especially in her professional persona, never contracting for one book when a multi- volume series would do the job better. Her favourite was the "Stone-mason" trilogy - The Heaven Tree (1960), The Green Branch (1962), The Scarlet Seed (1963) - although the "Brothers of Gwynedd" quartet (1974-77) ran it close since it featured another "heart-throb" (her own amused expression), Llewellyn the Great. Whilst a consummate professional (manuscripts were invariably delivered ahead of time, a sharp eye always kept on contracts), she had, perhaps, her surprising sides. In 1938 she felt guilt and anger at what she considered to be Chamberlain's duplicity over Czechoslovakia, a country for which she developed an abiding passion, celebrated in her 1949 travel book The Coast of Bohemia.

She learnt the language, initially with a set of 78rpm "Teach Yourself" records, and did much to promote it, after the war translating over a dozen works by some of the country's most distinguished writers, including Jan Neruda's Tales of the Little Quarter (1957) and Joseph Bor's small-scale tragic masterpiece about the extraordinary Verdi concert at Auschwitz, The Terezn Requiem (1963). In 1968 she was awarded the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations Gold Medal "for services to Czech literature". This she probably appreciated rather more than the awards she received from the Mystery Writers of America (an "Edgar" in 1962) or the British Crime Writers Association (a "Silver Dagger" in 1980). If Edith Pargeter had a message in her oeuvre - her mainstream novels as well as the Cadfael books and her earlier "Felse family" mysteries - it was that by and large mankind was not entirely irredeemable. Yet she was not pious.

Indeed, she had an interesting streak of balefulness in her make-up: her 1965 short story "Tour of the Castle", for instance, features an extremely nasty revenge, and she could on occasion describe in the most full-blooded manner violence and horror and brutality. When she was 82 her right leg was amputated at the knee. This was entirely unregretted ("after the hell it had caused me!" she wrote). She was a tough old bird. Her Cadfael books will be recognised by genre historians as pioneering works. Perhaps she pulled her punches when it came to describing the real muck and blood and stench of the Middle Ages (her successors, however, such as the multi-pseudonymed Paul Doherty, at times went quite the other way), and perhaps too, latterly, her emphasis on the goodness of her characters was overdone. Even so, she redefined the form by avoiding irony in her work (all right in others' books; not in hers) and concentrating on the alien quality of the past ("they do things differently" as L.P. Hartley famously remarked), while at the same time pointing up the essential continuity of the human condition.

And she always wrote, whatever the genre, with absolute conviction. Edith Mary Pargeter (Ellis Peters), writer: born Horsehay, Shropshire 28 September 1913; BEM 1944; OBE 1994; died Madeley, Shropshire 14 October 1995. More about: Brother Cadfael (Ellis Peters) Brother Cadfael creator: Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael was a monk in the Benedictine abbey of St Peter and St Paul in 12th century Shrewsbury, near the Welsh Border. When we meet him in the first novel, he's a "squat, barrel-chested, bandy-legged veteran of fifty-seven". He'd spent the first two thirds of his working life as a soldier, fighting in the crusades, and as a sea captain about the coasts of the Holy Land, before giving it up for the monastic life. "He saw no contradiction in the delight he had taken in battle and adventure, and the keen pleasure he now found in quietude.

Spiced, to be truthful with more than a little mischief when he could get it." And he hadn't always been celibate, but remembered "ladies, in more lands than one, with whom he had enjoyed encounters pleasurable to both parties, and no harm to either". It is because of all this past experience that he is able to act as such an effective bridge between the enclosed monastic world and the bustling world outside. Now he's happily growing herbs in his retirement: "When you have done everything else, perfecting a conventual herb-garden is a fine and satisfying thing to do." He's able to "medicine not only the brothers, but many who came for help in their troubles .... He had not been bred to this science, he had learned it by experience, by trial and study, accumulating knowledge over the years, until some preferred his ministrations to those of the acknowledged physicians". It almost seems a pity that his work is being constantly interrupted by so mysterious disappearances and unexplained stabbings - but he obviously enjoys the constant challenges. He was the creation of Ellis Peters, the pseudonym of Edith (Mary) Pargeter (1913-1995).

She was born in Horsehay in Shropshire and lived there all her life, except during the Second World War when she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service in Liverpool. She was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1944. She wrote numerous books, but her first Brother Cadfael story (A Morbid Taste for Bones) did not appear until 1977. She explains how Cadfael came into being: "He emerged as the necessary protagonist when I had the idea of deriving a plot for a murder mystery from the true history of Shrewsbury Abbey in the twelfth century, and needed the high mediaeval equivalent of a detective, an observer and agent of justice in the centre of the action. I had no idea then what I was launching on the world, nor to how demanding a mentor I was subjecting myself". She adopted the name of Ellis Peters for her crime novels, so as not to get them confused with her other work - but, in fact, she found she was to have little time for anything else (in the end, there were 20 Cadfael novels plus a book of short stories). She explained that, for her, a thriller must be a morality story.

"If it strays from the side of the angels, provokes total despair ... takes pleasure in evil, that is unforgivable ... It is probably true that I am not very good at villains. The good interests me so much more." She was also well known for her translations of Czech classics. In addition, she wrote under the names of Peter Benedict, Jolyon Carr and John Redfern. A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977) In A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of the Cadfael books, the prior of Cadfael's monastery (who, desperate for holy relics to attract pilgrims to his abbey, "had been scouring the borderlands for a spare saint now for a year or more") decides to acquire the bones of the obscure St Winifred from a remote Welsh village. Cadfael, as a native Welsh speaker, persuades the abbot that it would be useful to let him go too.

It's he of course, who solves the subsequent murder, and he does it in such a way that everyone (except the murderer) is satisfied with the final outcome, the acquisitive prior as well as the villagers who didn't want to lose their beloved, if hitherto rather neglected, saint. There are amusing decriptions of the monks, including Prior Robert who "was more than six feet tall, attenuated and graceful, silver-grey of hair at fifty, blanched, and beautiful of visage, with long aristocratic features and lofty marble brow. There was no man in the midland shires would look more splendid in a mitre, superhuman in height and authority, and there was no man in England better aware of it, or more determined to prove it at the earliest opportunity. His very motions, sweeping across the chapter-house to his stall, understudied the pontificate".

The interplay beween the monks is well caught too, as when Cadfael's assistant, young Brother John (who shares Cadfael's sense of mischief), is reproved for introducing too much drama and gusto into a refectory reading: "You read for the glory of God and the saints, brother," Columbanus reminded him, with loving reproof and somewhat offensive humility, "not for your own!" (which, the author comments, "showed how little he knew about it, or how false he could be, one or the other".) "The blessed thought is ever in my mind," said Brother John with irrepressible zest, and winked at Cadfael behind his colleague's back." It is the humour and Cadfael's humanity that bring the book to life. During boring chapter meetings, for example, it was Cadfael's "habit to employ the time to good account by sleeping, which from long usage he could do bolt upright and undetected in his shadowy corner. He had a sixth sense which alerted him at need, and brought him awake instantly and plausibly.

He had even been known to answer a question pat, when it was certain he had been asleep when it was put to him". The action sequences may not always be as exciting as they might be, but Cadfael himself is always convincing. One Corpse Too Many (1979) One Corpse Too Many finds King Stephen storming Shrewsbury Castle in 1138. Brother Cadfael is helping to bury the 94 bodies of the hanged garrison, when he discovers there are 95 bodies - and the extra one has been murdered. There is a lot of dramatic action throughout, and it all makes a vivid, fast-moving story, what with the arrival of young Godric as Cadfael's assistant, who, Cadfael is quick to notice, throws a stone in a very ladylike way, and the introduction of Hugh Beringar, whom Cadfael first sees as an opponent, but who ends up as his friend and Deputy Sheriff of Shropshire.

Cadfael, determined that the murdered man "shall have justice before I let this matter rest", plays a very active part in all that goes on, setting out to save treasure, ensure the escape of important runaways and even outwit the formidable Hugh. Cadfael emerges as a very real, shrewd, brave and resourceful character. "I am not finding it all dull, these days," he comments. Monk's-Hood (1980) Monk's-Hood is a dark oil, made from mustard oil and flax seeds, that is very useful for embrocation but poisonous to drink, as we soon discover. Gervase Bonel is the one who dies, just before he signs a document, leaving his manor to the abbey, in return for the use of a house there, bread and ale, meat or fish daily, and "ten shillings yearly for linen, shoes and firing". It is this sort of background detail that makes it all so convincing.

Suspects include his illegitimate son, and his widow, Richildis, who turns out to be the girl that Cadfael had been"affianced" to 42 years earlier, before he'd left for the Holy Land: "He'd delayed his coming far too long; and she, for all her pledges to wait for him, had tired at last and succombed to her parents' urgings, and married a more stable character". Gervase Bonel had been her second husband. But the main suspect, who is vigorously pursued by the aggressive sergeant (temporarily in charge in Beringar's absence) is Edwin, her 14 year old son by her first marriage, a resourceful lad who needs all the help he can get from his near-twin, his sister's son, 14 year old Edwy (yes, it is all rather confusing), and the resourceful Cadfael.

It seems a rather prolonged story, told at a leisurely pace, but Cadfael himself is never boring: When the unctuous Brother Jerome reports him for seeing too much of Richildis, he thinks, "God forgive me, if I could wring your scrawny neck now, I would do it and rejoice". Prior Robert found Cadfael "a man who always caused him slight discomfort, as though he found in Cadfael's blunt, practical, tolerant self-sufficiency a hidden vein of satire and amusement". Saint Peter's Fair (1981) Saint Peter's Fair is a great annual 3-day fair held annually at Shrewsbury, and, as always, the author describes this background setting very convincingly. It's a time when the abbey can make a lot of money, and the townspeople complain to the abbot: "For three days, the three busiest of the year, when we might do well out of tolls on carts and pack-horses and man-loads passing through the town to reach the fair, we must levy no charges, neither murage nor pavage. All tolls belong to the abbey.

Goods coming up the Severn by boat tie up at your jetty, and pay their dues to you. We get nothing, and for this privilege you pay no more than thirty-eight shillings, and even that we must go to the trouble to distrain from the rents of your tenants in the town". It's no wonder that rioting breaks out. Then a rich merchant is found murdered, and Cadfael, Beringar and the merchant's niece, Emma, and her admirer soon get further involved. It all gets very complicated, with Emma seeming to conceal a secret that turns out to threaten her life, but Cadfael puzzles out what is going on, and even has (a little) time to wonder if prayer can "have a retrospective effect upon events, as well as influencing the future.... It was a most delicate and complex theological problem, never as far as he knew, raised before". Anyway, it all builds up to a dramatic rescue attempt.

The Leper of St Giles (1981) The Leper of St Giles, set in October 1139, features an arranged marriage between a highly unpleasant "ageing nobleman" (who is nearly 60) and a young and attractive 18-year-old heiress. Both wedding parties converge on Shrewsbury. "I pray God help her!"said Brother Mark (Cadfael's assistant). "It may be," replied Brother Cadfael, rather to himself than to his friend, "that he intends to. But it may also be that he has a right to expect a little support from men in setting about it." You can guess which of the unhappy couple is murdered. The chief suspect, helped by an old leper called Lazarus, disguises himself as a leper and takes refuge at the Saint Giles leper hospice. Cadfael is as shrewd as ever, but Hugh Beringar is away looking after affairs at his manor in the north, so there is not the usual interplay beween them, and the story does seem rather long drawn-out, ending with a final, if improbable, revelation of Lazarus' real identity.

The Virgin in the Ice (1982) The Virgin in the Ice is the rather prolonged story of two orphans of a noble family, a girl of 17 and a boy of 13, and a companion nun, fleeing from Worcester into a wilderness of frost and snow, then disappearing. It is November 1139, only a month after Cadfael's last adventure, but here he is again, finding a body in the ice. For a monk, he seems to live a remarkably busy life. With Hugh Berengar's help, the brigands' castle is assaulted and the "rosy-cheeked" boy is freed to rejoin his sister. The historical background of war-torn countryside is well handled, but some of the characters are not all that interesting or convincing, as when one of the suspects says, "Dead! Dead? In her youth, in her beauty - trusting me. Dead! Oh, stones of this house, fall and cover me, unhappy! Bury me out of the sight of men". Although dramatic things happen, they are not as exciting and unpredictable as, for example, those in the Sister Fidelma stories.

In the end, Cadfael realises that the young man who rescues the boy and is in love with the girl, must be his own son, whom he has never seen before (his mother had been a young widow in Antioch whom Cadfael had met during the Crusades). Berengar's son too has now been born: "What a bedevilment of all our values," he tells Cadfael, "is this civil war!" "Not at all," said Cadfaerl sturdily. "There never was, for all I could ever learn, a time when living was easy and peaceful. Your boy will grow up into a better ordered world." If only. The Sanctuary Sparrow (1983) The Sanctuary Sparrow gets off to an arresting start when a poor young jongleur (acrobat) called Liliwin, pursued by a mob accusing him of murder and robbery, breaks in to a monastic service, seeking sanctuary. Brother Cadfael becomes convinced of his innocence, and even continues to support him when he discovers that Liliwin and a servant girl have been making love behind the altar.

"Where mutual love is," says Cadfael, 'I find it hard to consider any place too holy to house it." To him, Liliwin is "a bit of a rogue, perhaps, but no worse than the most of us. A bit of a liar when the need's great enough, but who isn't?" The author's sympathy for the young lovers shines through. There are other interesting characters too, including the formidable old lady, Dame Juliana, who had little time for anyone except Brother Cadfael who tends her ailments. She was determined to greet him "with all the presence and assurance of a healthy old lady in full command of her household .... He knew she was in no such matter, and she knew that he knew it. She had a foot in the grave, and sometimes felt it sinking under her and drawing her in. But this was a final game they played together, in respect and admiration if not in love or even liking". Her grand-daughter, Susanna, is another formidable character, and the scene in which her brother's new wife tries to get the keys of the house off her is another of those domestic scenes that Peters handles so well.

Then there's a dramatic conclusion in which Liliwin's acrobatic skills are really put to the test. It's all very convincing. The Devil's Novice (1983) The Devil's Novice begins with two requests to the abbey to admit younger sons to the Order. One of the boys is only aged 5, and Abbot Radulfus decides, "I am now convinced that it is better to refuse all oblates until they are able to consider for themselves what manner of life they desire ... Let his father know that in a few years' time the boy will be welcome, as a pupil in our school, but not as an oblate entering the order." The other candidate, Meriet Aspley, a young man of 19, is accepted but there is obviously something odd about him. He has such appalling nghtmares that he soon earns the nickname of The Devil's Novice and even assaults the smarmy Brother Jerome. On Cadfael's suggestion, Meriet is sent to help the saintly young Mark with his work among the lepers at Saint Giles.

Then Cadfael helps High Beringar (yet again conveniently left in charge because of his superior's absence) to find out what has happened to a missing churchman - and this in turn leads him to discover the real cause of Meriet's distress. All this is very well researched - the political background and even details like the construction of a charcoal burner's stack are convincingly described. And the various characters (particularly the monks, and the two women in love) are very well portrayed. The emphasis on the monastic setting, too, makes this one of the more realistic and stronger stories. Cadfael, as always, holds the interest, and his sense of perspective remains one of his most endearing qualities: "From the day of our birth we are on the way to our death. What matters is how we conduct the journey". Dead Man's Ransom (1984) Dead Man's Ransom starts In February 1141. Chester and Lincoln have rebelled against King Stephen, and sheriff Gilbert Prescote and his deputy Hugh Beringar have taken their men up there to fight for the king.

Stephen has a safe hilltop position in Lincoln, but then, as Hugh Beringar later told Cadfael, "With that mad chivalry of his, for which God knows I love him though I curse him, he orders his array down from the height into the plain, to meet his enemy on equal terms". He is then defeated (and taken prisoner). This is something that really happened. Talk about fact being stranger than fiction. Gilbert Prescote is badly wounded and captured by the Welsh. Eventually, he is exchanged for Elis, a Welsh prisoner - but ends up murdered. Perhaps by now the author had run out of reasons for sending him away from Shewsbury so that Beringar could be left in charge, and saw this as a happy opportunity of getting rid of him entirely. Elis has a foster brother Eliud with whom he's been inseparable since childhood (Ellis Peters always seems attracted by the idea of inseparable young men with similar names), and one eventually gives his life for the other, but their actions, characters and love affairs don't seem all that probable.

Cadfael himself seems encouraged to do whatever he wants by his very compliant abbot, and can even entertain a visiting nun of his acquaintance: "If you have an hour to spare," said Cadfael heartly, "come and share a flask of wine of my own making in the herb-garden". But it's not one of his most interesting cases, partly because Ellis Peters isn't at her best with violent battle scenes. The Pilgrim of Hate (1984) The Pilgrim of Hate sees Empress Maud about to be crowned in London while King Stephen is still a prisoner in Bristol. Meanwhile pilgrims gather in Shrewsbury to celebrate the 4th anniversary of the arrival of St Winifred's bones. Only Cadfael knows that they aren't really her bones, but can only hope and pray that she'll be there in spirit. He rejoices to have a godson, the one year old son of Hugh Beringar, now sheriff, and reflects: "There was, after all, a great deal of human happiness in the world, even a world so torn and mangled with conflict, cruelty and greed".

But among the pilgrims are some strange customers, including 16 year old Rhun with one leg so "twisted and feebled" that he needs crutches to get along. There are also a pair of the (usual) inseparable young men, Ciaran (walking barefoot with " a great heavy cross on a string round his neck, too, and he rubbed raw with the chafing of it ... He said he was under vow to go unshod to his journey's end") and Matthew, who seems to be looking after him. Olivier de Bretagne also appears. He is actually Cadfael's son but doesn't know it. His face, Beringar notices, was "worth studying, clean-boned, olive-skinned. fiercely beautiful, even with the golden falcon's eyes thus hooded". Unfortunately he is on the Empress Maud's side and Beringar supports Stephen. But with all these characters and such a background, an interesting lively plot unfolds, and there's even a highly dramatic moment when what seems like a real miracle occurs. Recommended.

An Excellent Mystery (1985) An Excellent Mystery is an involved story that starts in August 1141, when Empress Maud has been forced to leave London (and hopes of a coronation there) for Winchester where, we are told, she "laid siege to the bishop in his castle of Wolvesey, in the city, and the bishop rained fire-arrows down upon the roofs rather than upon his enemies. The town is laid waste". A nunnery and priory were amongst the buildings burnt to the ground. Two refugees from the Winchester priory seek shelter at the abbey in Shrewsbury, one called Humilis, a monk who had been very badly wounded in the crusades, and his ever faithful companion Fidelis with "clear ivory skin, smooth and youthful", but who is dumb. The lustful monk Urien has his eye on him as well as on the handsome 16 year old, Rhun, whom we met in the previous story. In the choir Urien watches them both: "Their youth and beauty seemed to gather to itself what light there was, so that they shone with a native radiance of their own, like lighted candles ....

They had both begun - dreadful sign! - to look to him like the woman (his ex-wife)". Could there be a clue here? Then young squire Nicholas Harnage sets about trying to track down what happened to a young nun who, he is afraid, may have perished in the fire at the Winchester nunnery. It all gets very complicated and is certainly as mysterious as the title suggests, and builds up to a surprising (if not absolutely convincing) conclusion. Cadfael is less prominently featured than sometimes, which is always a pity, but there's still plenty going on. The Raven in the Foregate (1986) The Raven in the Foregate sees Cadfael and Beringar in close partnership again, even if Cadfael doesn't tell him all he knows, and Beringar knows it. They certainly live in interesting times: the Papal Legate, the Bishop of Winchester, has changed sides again and has gone back to supporting the winning side of freed King Stephen. A new priest for the neighbouring Church of the Holy Cross arrives. He is Father Ailnoth ("a man with every virtue, except humility and human kindness") so ends up dead in the river.

A young so-called servant who came to Shreswbury with Ailnoth, and calls himself Benet, is sent to work with Cadfael. He has "a guileless face, but for the suppressed smoulder of mischief in the wide hazel eyes" which is the author's way of telling us that he is not just a servant. Meanwhile Berengar is searching for one Ninian Bachiler, an envoy sent by Empress Maud who is now trying to flee the country. You can guess what happens: Cadfael tricks Benet into revealing his real identity, and, as usual, all ends happily, and, thanks to more trickery, this time from Beringar, the true cause of Ailnoth's death is revealed. "You are a devious creature," Cadfael told Hugh Beringar. "Like calling to like," replied Hugh. The Rose Rent (1986) The Rose Rent, set in May 1142, tells how young Mistress Judith Perle, recently widowed, gives one of her properties to the abbey for an annual rent of a single rose to be taken from a bush in her old garden.

But, as an attractive wealthy woman (heiress to the biggest clothiers' business in the town), she attracts suitors, some of whom would prefer her to recover the property. She begins to wonder if she wouldn't be better off as a nun. Certainly one of the most lively character in the book is Sister Magdalen of the nuns at Godfric's Ford. Amongst Judith's secret admirers is young monk Brother Eluric, who has been brought up in the abbey since he was three years old, so kept away from women all this time. Abbot Radulfus is glad they'll no longer be accepting these young boys: "Sooner or later a woman must cross their path, terrible as an army with banners, and those wretched children without arms or armour to withstand the onslaught! We wrong women, and we wrong these boys, to send them unprepared into maturity, whole men defenceless against the first pricking of the flesh". There's a sort of sweet innocence about the author's handling of all this, and about her choice of words, but she always seems happiest to refer to monks' sexuality (if she has to refer to it at all) in a discreet rather romantic way.

The rose bush is destroyed and "two deaths and a disappearance, all circling round the same lady and her dealings with the abbey, demanded very close attention". Cadfael sets about matching boots to find the culprit. Then there's a sudden happy ending. Not one of the author's most realistic or gripping stories. The Hermit of Eyton Forest (1987) The Hermit of Eyton Forest is a much stronger story. It's about ten-year-old Richard Ludel, and his grandmother's attempt to marry him off to an heiress of twenty two. Luckily for him, he's one of the four remaining boys still being looked after by the abbey, so does not lack support. He is a resourceful and resolute character, who admittedly sometimes talks and behaves in a way that does not seem entirely realistic for a ten-year-old, but then he goes missing and, after a couple of stabbings, there's a really exciting chase.

There's also a hermit, Cuthred, and his young assistant who is "a young fellow of about twenty years", described as " as lean and brown and graceful as a fawn" with "long amber eyes that tilted upwards at the outer corners, under oblique copper brows. The burning glow of those eyes he shaded, but did not dim or conceal, beneath round-arched lids and copper lashes long and rich as a woman's." You can't help wondering about him, then the author goes on: "What was an antique saint doing with an unnerving fairy thing in his employ?" The final straw comes when his name is revealed: it is Hyacinth! All this is entirely unintentional humor, of which the author seems blithely unaware. Hyacinth is, in fact, meant to be a strong masculine character. The actual story-telling is very well done, and the reader's attention is held throughout, as when we are told that the boy has some important secret information but we have to wait to find out what it is. Recommended.

The Confession of Brother Haluin (1988) The Confession of Brother Haluin gets off to a good start, then slowly winds its way to a rather predictable ending. Brother Haluin, working to repair the abbey roof in treacherous snowy conditions, falls and is so badly injured that he makes what he thinks is a deathbed confession to the Abbot and (of course) Brother Cadfael. He tells them how, some 18 years previously, he had stolen herbs from Cadfael and given them to the girl he had loved so as to abort the child she was expecting], with the result that the girl and the baby she was carrying both died. Haluin unexpectedly recovers, although with badly damaged feet, and, as a self-imposed penance for his sin, painfully hobbles off on crutches, accompanied by Cadfael, determined to travel on foot all the way to the scene of his offence so many years before. Amongst those he meets there are a young couple whose union is being prevented because they are believed to be too closely related.

He sees this "rounded, fresh-faced girl, no more than seventeen or eighteen, half her oval countenance two great startled eyes and the wide, high forehead above them, white and smooth as pearl. Haluin uttered a strange, soft cry in his throat, between gasp and sigh, clutched at his crutches and heaved himself to his feet, staring at this sudden glowing apparition .... the crutches slid and fell from under him, and he went down on his face in a gradual, crumpled fall, and lay senseless in the rushes of the floor." Guess why! Oh yes, someone gets stabbed too, before it's all sorted out. The Heretic's Apprentice (1989) The Heretic's Apprentice is set in the summer of 1143, and is centered around a magificently carved old wooden box, obviously created to hold something of great value, that is brought back to Shrewsbury by young Elave who has been away with his master, William of Lythwood, to the crusades for seven years, but has now returned with William's body for burial in the abbey grounds.

There's a strong story involving Elave's developing love for beautful Fortunata, for whose dowry William had intended that the box and its contents should be used. When one of her household is stabbed in the back, Cadfael and Beringar soon get involved. Cadfael is convinced that Elave cannot be the murderer partly because, if it had been him, the stabbing would have been carried out face to face (an argument we've heard Cadfael used before about characters he likes). I particularly liked this book because of the very convincing monastic setting with all too credible disagreements between senior clergy (some quite saintly and others, like the visiting Canon Gerbert, distinctly unpleasant) and the theological ideas that are raised, as when Elave is not only suspected of murder but accused of heresy. He is accused because "he does not believe that children who die unbaptised are doomed to reprobation ... he does not believe in original sin ... he holds that a man can, by his own acts, make his own way towards salvation ... and he rejects what Saint Augustine wrote of predestination, that the number of elect is already chosen and cannot be changed, and all others are doomed to reprobation".

But, as Elave had discovered from his reading while imprisoned, "This Augustine went through many changes of mind over the years", and Cadfael could not but agree as Augustine was a saint of whom he too "was not as fond as he might have been". Recommended. The Potter's Field (1989) The Potter's Field is a field, recently been acquired by the abbey, where the remains of a woman's body are found. Could this be the missing wife of Ruald the potter? He had subsequently become a particularly holy and fulfilled monk at the abbey - but was he harbouring a guilty secret? Another suspect is Sulien Blount, a young novice monk from sacked Ramsey Abbey, who had once been in love with the missing woman, and whose brother was now lord of a neighbouring manor. Brother Jerome gets suspicious when Ruald and Sulien meet each other and talk at the abbey. "Jerome had watched avidly, and was no wiser. This aggrieved him. He took pride in knowing everything that went on within and around the abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and his reputation would suffer if he allowed this particular obscurity to go unprobed".

So interfere he does. It's an interesting situation that gets off to a good start, but the solution takes a long time coming, and there are lots of lengthy conversations but hardly any exciting action. Cadfael's "besetting sin of curiosity" had soon got him involved and, as always, he was encouraged to take time off by Abbot Radolfus (but not by Prior Robert who, understandably enough, "considered that Cadfael was far too often allowed a degree of liberty outside the enclave that offended the prior's strict interpretation of the Rule"). But it's all rather ponderous, and the ending, when it comes. is more surprising than convincing. Summer of the Danes (1991) In Summer of the Danes, Cadfael (who, as always wecomed "a little excitement" as "every now and then my feet itch") is sent across Wales with Brother Mark, his old pupil, who is an envoy from the Bishop of Lichfield with gifts for two Bishops in Wales. Very unusually, Cadfael lets Mark take the lead: "Mark had the governance, not for the world would Cadfael have robbed him of it by word or act".

It is April 1144. The two of them become the prisoners of invading Danes from Dublin who have come to support the treacherous Cadwaladr, who is in revolt against his brother, the prince Owain Gwynmead. Mark manages to become an envoy for the prince, then a hostage. It all gets very Welsh and confusing (this time there are two sets of young men who could be twins), and there'a love story too involving Heledd, a headstrong young woman (whose father had arranged her engagement to a Welshman she had never met) and one of the Danish leaders. But it all ends happily. Somehow you knew it would. The Holy Thief (1992) The Holy Thief, written when Ellis Peters must have been 78, is one of the best books in the series. It is full of suspense and keeps you wondering what is going to happen next. Set in the late summer of 1144, it tells the story of ambitious, but repressed and forbidding Sub-Prior Hereluin, and a novice, Brother Tutilo, who travel together from Ramsay trying to collect funds and offers of help to restore the abbey there.

Tutilo, a twenty-year old with "an angelic voice so generously bestowed on one who was certainly no angel" was "at first glance a lovely innocent" but hidden behind this outward appearance "an engaging but slightly perilous creature lurked in possibly mischievous ambush". He turns out to be both a thief and a liar, but remains an utterly engaging character. Theft (of St Winifred's coffin, no less) and murder soon occur, and Brother Cadfael is kept as busy as usual. Other memorable characters include the shrewd and powerful Robert Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, and Daalny, the very independently-minded slave girl, who has been made to sing for the wandering musician who had bought her, but falls for Tutilo. It is she who points out that "these monastics, they are what they are born, only with a vengeance. If they come into the world hard and cold, they end up harder and colder, if they come generous and sweet, they grow ever sweeter and more generous".

Amongst the numerous interesting parts is the description of the sortes Biblicae, when a Bible is opened at random to reveal a message from, on this occasion, St Winifred herself, who is being asked to adjudicate where her bones should rest. Miraculously apt responses are found for the three applicants, then the Bible's pages are turned without human help (by the wind? Cadfael thinks not) to reveal the verse: "And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death". But which brother was the murderer and how could he slip away from the monastery at night without being seen? "There are," Cadfael reminded Abbot Rudolfus, " ways in and out for any determined to pass". "The abbot met his eyes without a smile; he was always in command of his countenance. For all that, there was not much in this household that Rudulfus did not know. There had been times when Cadfael had both departed and returned by night, without passing the gatehouse, on urgent matters in which he found justification for absence. " "No doubt you speak out of long experience," said the abbot.

It is this interplay beween the monks, and the historical accuracy of it all, together with the humor, that make the story sound so real. And. in the end, even the "lurking" Brother Jerome gets his uppance, and in a most surprising way. Recommended. Brother Cadfael's Penance (1994) Brother Cadfael's Penance was the very last of the Cadfael novels. It is set in the year 1145. By now Cadfael is 65 and feeling his age, and both the humour and his sense of mischief seem to have largely disappeared. He sets off to attend a conference in Coventry between King Stephen and his warring cousin Empress Maud. Cadfael hears that his own son, Olivier de Bretagne, has been taken prisoner, so he ignores his abbot's instructions and sets off to track him down. Cadfael becomes involved in a major siege of the castle in which his son is held, before eventually returning to Shropshire, fearful that his monastery will no longer accept him. "I have sinned," he told himself. 'I have forsaken the house and the Order to which I swore stability.

I have gone after my own desires, and no matter if those desires were devoted all to the deliverance of my son, it was sin to prefer them before the duty I had freely and gladly assumed as mine. And it it was all to do again, would I do otherwise than I have done? No, I would do the same. A thousand times over, I would do the same. And it would still be sin .... You do what you must do, and pay for it. " The story itself is far from simple, as there's a great deal of complicated politics and detailed accounts of warfare in it, and I didnt find Cadfael's developing relationship with his idealised son and his captor entirely convincing. It makes an interesting comparison with the first Cadfael book: the plot is very much stronger, but Cadfael himself is much less quirky and entertaining. But then Ellis Peters was in her eighties when she wrote it. A Rare Benedictine (1988) A Rare Benedictine was the name given to a collection of three short stories that had previously been published in Winter's Crimes volumes.

The first of them, A Light on the Road to Woodstock (1985), is the most interesting as it tells the story of how Cadfael became a monk in 1120. But it doesn't really explain very much, for, as Ellis Peters points out in her introduction, he "is not a convert, for this is not a conversion. ... Cadfael had always been an unquestioning believer. What happens to him on the road to Woodstock is simply the acceptance of a revelation from within that the life he has lived to date, active, mobile and often violent, has reached its natural end, and he is confronted by a new need and a different challenge". There is more explanation here than in the story that is all about a dispute at Woodstock about ownership of land beween Prior Heribert of Shrewsbury (who is kidnapped on his way to the trial and freed by Cadfael) and Cadfael's old master, Roger Maduit (whose life is also saved by Cadfael). Cadfael, whose full name turns out to be Cadfael ap Meilyr ap Dafydd, had spent 17 years at the wars.

He is described as "blunt and insubordinate" but "experienced and accomplished in arms, a man of his word, once given, and utterly reliable in whatever situation on land or sea". He is "a broad-set, sturdy. muscular man in his healthy prime, brown-haired and brown-skinned from easrern suns and outdoor living ... A comely enough face, strongly featured, with the bold bones of his race - there had been women, in his time, who had found him handsome". It seems all the stranger that, at the end of the story, he should suddenly turn to Prior Heribert and say: "Father, here am I at the turning of my life, free of one master's service, and finished with arms. Take me with you!" The Price of Light (1979) sees Cadfael well established in the abbey at Shrewsbury, when Hamo Fitzhammon arrives with a gift of fine silver candlesticks for the altar.

"Though a gross feeder, a heavy drinker, a self-indulgent lecher, a harsh landlord and a brutal master, he had reached the age of sixty in the best of health, and it came as a salutary shock to him when he was at last taken with a mild seizure, and for the first time in his life saw the next world yawning before him" - hence the gift. "Abbot Heribert, who after a long life of reated disillusionment still contrived to think the best of everybody, was moved to tears by this penitential generosity". Cadfael "said nothing. and waited to observe and decide for himself. Not that he expected much; he had been in the world fifty-five years, and learned to temper all his expctations, bad or good". Cadfael is quick to notice the pretty girl who comes with Hamo: "This girl must be a second or third wife, a good deal younger than her stepson, and a beauty at that. Hamo was secure enough and important enough to keep himself supplied wiith wives as he wore them out".

There's a toughness about the writing here, and humor and even sacasm as when the author tells us that Abbot Heribert "was no drinker, and could have little in common with Hamo Fitzhamon. Apart, of course, from a deep devotion to the altar of St Mary". The candlesticks are stolen, and a special draught that Cadfael prepared to help Hamo's wife to get to sleep is given by her to her loutish husband so that she can meet her lover late at night in the wooden hut where Cadfael mixes and stores his medicines. Hearing them whispering together, "Cadfael withdrew very circumspectly from the herb garden", Subsequently he even resorted to a little blackmail to secure her support in preventing Hamo wrongfully calling a runaway maid servant a thief. Cadfael comes across again as a very real character. Eye Witness is a more conventional story about a chief steward of the abbey, Master William Rede, who is robbed and thrown into the river. Cadfael patiently looks after his injuries: "A knock on the head like that will have addled his wits.We'll need to tell him things before he tells us any".

But even when he can talk, he can't say anything that helps to identify his attacker. Then Cadfael remembers an old beggar whose attic overlooked the scene of the crime, and began spreading a rumour that he might have seen what happened. The assailant falls into the trap, tries to attack him, and is caught. But, as usual, Ellis Peters seems happier describing human relationships (including monastic in-fighting) than tackling dramatic set pieces of this sort. I must admit that I didn't at first include Cadfael on this site as I found his adventures much less exciting, and the backgrounds less interesting, than those of, say, Sister Fidelma , but, now that I'm re-reading the books, I find there's much to enjoy in the humour and interaction between him and the other characters, and the historical accuracy of the settings. 13 of the books were made into TV films (1994-6), impressively shot on location in Hungary, and are available on DVD. Ellis Peters was very unsure about this (for one thing, the film-makers abandoned Welsh accents in case Americans wouldn't understand them), but they were very well-made.

Derek Jacobi made an excellent Cadfael, although the producers had at first felt that he was "too posh"and he needed Ellis Peters' support to win them round. If you watch all the TV episodes, you'll see that Hugh Beringar seems to change his appearance - this is because he was eventually played by three different actors, because of availability problems! Jacobi comments that the episodes looked more convincing as the series developed: the standing sets started to look more weatherworn, and the costumes were made of less colourful materials and looked more like real clothes. But, inevitably, many of Ellis Peters' sub-plots had to be dispensed with, and, Jacobi tells us, she not only eventually accepted this, but even got round to promising, "The next one I write, I'll make sure it will be easier for you all to film". But she never wrote another. If you're a real enthusiast, you might be interested in Cadfael's Companion, a large encyclopedia listing all the characters and places (real and imaginary) as well as the herbs mentioned in the books, with entries arranged in alphabetical order.

Written by Robin Whiteman, it was published in 1991 so does not refer to the last two novels. Used copies are available through Abebooks and Amazon (see below). There are numerous references including those on the Wikipedia and Borderland sites. Please sign my GUEST BOOK . All comments, contributions (or corrections) welcomed! Edith Pargeter--Ellis Peters (Book, 2003) [WorldCat.org] The E-mail message field is required. Please enter the message. E-mail Message: I thought you might be interested in this item at Title: Edith Pargeter--Ellis Peters Author: Margaret Lewis Publisher: Bridgend, Mid-Glamorgan : Seren, 2003. ISBN/ISSN: 1854113291 9781854113290 OCLC:53824489 The ReCaptcha terms you entered were incorrect. Please try to match the 2 words shown in the window, or try the audio version. Ellis Peters Ellis Peters A pseudonym used by Edith Pargeter Ellis Peters was one of the pseudonyms for Edith Pargeter.

Under the name "Ellis Peters" she wrote mystery/crime novels; in particular the series of Brother Cadfael books, which later where made into a brilliant TV series starring Derek Jacobi. Fallen into the Pit by Ellis Peters The war ended, and the young men came home, and tried indignantly to fit themselves into old clothes and old habits which proved, on examination, to be both a little threadbare, and on trial to be both cripplingly small for bodies and minds mysteriously grown in absence. Things changed overnight changed again next day. Nobody knew where he stood. Even the language was different. At the ‘Shock of H... ... Decoding Cadfael (TV Movie 2008) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Search for " Decoding Cadfael " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Add Image Add an image Do you have any images for this title?

3 May 2008 (UK) See more » Filming Locations: Enjoyable revisit of the medieval detective series 9 May 2008 | by bs3dc (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews "Decoding Cadfael" is essentially a series of recent interviews of people who worked on the thirteen-episode series as well as detective story writers and archive footage of the late Edith Pargeter, who wrote the books under the pseudonym of Ellis Peters. Her biographer is also featured and helps fill in the details that the author cannot. This programme does well to avoid interviewing 'celebrity fans' that ruin most retrospectives with their banality. The interviewees all seem to have fond memories of the programme, especially Sir Derek Jacobi, who clearly regrets that the seven remaining novels were not filmed. The one jarring note is writer Bert Coules who for some reason seems to be championing Philip Madoc for the role, which though he was admittedly excellent in the BBC radio version (that Coules adapted), it is a bit late in the day to recast the title character when the series ended prematurely in 1996.

It is good to see the likes of Terence Hardiman, Julian Firth and Michael Culver whose appearances on television are sadly few and far between of late. The narration is by Sean Pertwee, who not only seems to do the voice-over for a remarkable percentage of UK television documentaries, but also starred as the first four episodes of the series as Hugh Beringar, before unfortunately leaving the series. For these reasons the commentary is in safe hands, although his script is unfortunately a little repetitive thanks to the apparent need to reiterate a sizable chunk after each advert break. The documentary mainly covers the difficulties they had to get Cadfael made. Edith Pargeter had problems in even getting the books published  until Umberto Eco's fantastic novel 'The Name of the Rose' was brought to the big screen and suddenly medieval fiction became popular. Delays then cost them Ian Holm as the sleuthing monk as being slow to start production meant that he took on other projects in the meantime. Though much of the material had been revealed in previous interviews it is still an entertaining fifty minutes or so for fans of a detective that seems to have been unfairly forgotten. 14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes Ellis Peters: Beloved Creator of “Brother Cadfael” | The Lineup Subscribe Ellis Peters: Beloved Creator of “Brother Cadfael” Edith Pargeter (a.k.a. Ellis Peters) once said, "It is probably true that I am not very good at villains. The good interest me so much more." StumbleUpon stumbles FROM THE ARCHIVES: THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE VOL. 29 ISSUE 1, WINTER 1996. Edith Pargeter graced us with her charm, humor, and enthusiasm, and love of words. For nearly 60 years she created new people and places which will live on in the hearts and minds of her many fans. It is no small feat to have spent a lifetime creating rather than destroying. I first met Edith at a small, elegantly run hotel tucked away on a side street just yards away from Buckingham Palace. With sparkling eyes and a ready smile, Edith led us on a morning tea discussion that featured helpings of everything from true crimes to the drought in England, from London tourists to U.S.

mystery bookstores, from the merchandising of Brother Cadfael to the funeral customs of Jews, Maoris, and every group in between; all served between generous dollops of history and social customs of England, Scotland, and Wales. The next time I saw her was in the hot, overcrowded second floor of a mystery bookshop located a few steps away from Carnegie Hall, the Russian Tea Room, and the Hard Rock Cafe. I watched her spend hours greeting people, drawing out those who were too awestruck to speak, sending everyone away with an autograph and a little gift of herself. Edith, in fact, shared much more of her very private life with us than perhaps she realized. It was inevitable that three of her greatest loves – music, Czechoslovakia and India – would figure in her greatest love of all, writing. Through her work, we came to know and appreciate her essentially optimistic and gentle view of the world. She invited us to ancient Rome, medieval Shrewsbury, and contemporary India and Czechoslovakia. She led trips to the seashore, the mountains, and the canals of Venice. She fought border skirmishes, an almost endless civil war, and World War II.

She taught us about archaeology, opera, and heresy. She introduced us to kings and common soldiers, artists and writers, musicians and singers, very dumb criminals, and very smart ones, the occasional witch, a woman with a mid-life crisis, a vicious Nazi, countless young men coming of age, and countless young women helping them along. She has written capers, women-in-jeopardy, romantic suspense, historical fiction, and a travelog. She was a woman of many interests, much talent, and untold surprises. On September 12, 1995, Edith suffered a stroke which paralyzed much of the right side of her body. It was to be the final illness thrust upon an indomitable spirit housed in a small but feisty body. Having already come through a fall which broke her back with nothing more than some slowness in her walk, and an illness with ultimately led to a partial amputation of her leg, Miss Pargeter told her friend and long-time agent Deborah Owen, “I’m ready, and you must understand that this is the best thing.” She spent several weeks in the hospital, and then insisted upon returning home. She died quietly at 3 a.m.

on October 14, 1995. Ms. Owen said, “Although we all tend to be selfish in such moments, it is important to know that she was prepared, and at peace.” Edith Mary Pargeter was born the youngest of three in the village of Horsehay, Shropshire, on September 23, 1913. Her father was the head clerk at the local ironworks. Her elder brother, Edmund Ellis, was an engineer, and her middle sister married. She was profoundly influenced by her mother, who had written poetry but gave it up to raise three children, and never married herself, feeling that she could not both run a family and write–and for her the writing always came first. Insofar as the intensely private lady talked about herself, Edith talked about a very happy childhood. Educated at Dawley Church of England Elementary School, and then on a scholarship at Coalbrookdale High School for Girls, she obtained an Oxford Higher School Certificate at first class honors in English. At age 20 she became a chemist’s assistant in Dawley, where she learned much that would help her over her years of writing.

Her earliest works included short stories and a short novel under her own names, and several novels under the name of Jolyon Carr, which were serialized in regional newspapers. She was to use other pseudonyms in her early career–as John Redfern she wrote a delightful mystery called The Victim Needs a Nurse, and as Peter Benedict she wrote Day Star, about a movie actress. Just before the war she published her first full-length novel, The City Lies Foursquare (1939). When the war began she resigned from her job with the chemist and applied to the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The service didn’t deter her writing, and She Goes to War , about the WRNS, was published in 1942. The first volume of a trilogy about a common soldier’s war. The Eighth Champion of Christendom , also came out while she was still in uniform (1945), with the second book arriving just after ( Reluctant Odyssey , 1946). On V-E Day in 1944 Edith received the British Empire Medal, and she was demobilized as a Petty Officer on V-J Day, 1945.

The war years also helped form her lifelong connection with Czechoslovakian people, language and culture. She became very interested in their classics on the shelves of her friends, many of which had no translations. She began to read them with the help of dictionaries and written grammars and, finding that inadequate, started making her own translations of poetry and prose. In honor of her contribution to Czech literature, she received the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations Gold Medal in 1968, the award she remained most proud of through all the honors she received. Her Czech contacts introduced her to India, where she went on for a long visit, and which served as the background for two novels. IN 1951 Edith tried her first serious thriller in her own name, Fallen Into the Pit , which introduced the Felse family. In 1959 she developed her most famous pseudonym, Ellis Peters, upon completion of her second thriller in order to keep these works separate from her mainstream work. The Felse family reappeared in 1961, in the Edgar-winning Death and the Joyful Woman . In the meantime, she continued to write historical novels.

The Heaven Tree Trilogy remained the work that came the closest to what she had envisioned. However, she felt that her quartet of novels on the life of Prince Llewelyn ap Griffith, the first true prince of all Wales, The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet , was her most important work. By 1977 the idea for a thriller based on a true historical incident had been germinating for a while and A Morbid Taste for Bones was born. She had no intention of starting a series, but the siege and capture of Shrewsbury by King Stephen, and the massacre of the castle garrison, provided the germ of One Corpse Too Many . By that time Brother Cadfael had taken her over for good. Edith once said that the writing of the Cadfael novels had given her more pure pleasure than anything else she had done. Edith believed her writing was bound to reflect some of the teachings of the Church of England. Cadfael’s optimism, tolerance, and occasional unorthodoxy were characteristics he shared with his creator.

Although she maintained that there wasn’t much of herself in him, she did concede that he could have been “her better self.” Edith’s love for Shropshire formed a solid foundation for her life. She lived in the same early 1800s house for about 35 years, sharing it with her brother until his death. She memorialized him by taking his first name for her most famous pen name. (The last name, Peters, was a nod to a young friend named Petra, who was still a child when the name was chosen.) She cared deeply about the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the town of Shrewsbury. She was an ardent supporter of the Shrewsbury Quest, which shows life in a medieval abbey and also raised interest in the history of the town. About her most beloved creation she said, “Cadfael opens channels for me to say, through him, things it would be difficult to say through a modern protagonist.” The quality of Edith’s work has been recognized by both her readers and her peers throughout her lengthy career.

Besides the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations Gold Medal, recommended by the Czechoslovak Writers’ Union, and the Best Novel Edgar for Death and the Joyful Woman , she also received the British Crime Writers’ Association Silver Daggers Award in 1981, and their Diamond Dagger Award in 1993. In 1994 she was awarded an O.B.E in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list, and an honorary Master of Arts by Birmingham University. In 1995 she was the Guest of Honor at Malice Domestic VII, which she was unable to attend, and later in the year was named Grandmaster at Historicon I by her fellow historical mystery writers. Those of us who had the pleasure of corresponding with her, or meeting her, will forever be changed by her kind touch, but one need not have met the person to know what was important to know about her–one need only read her books. I will miss her and the books she had yet to write, but she will always be as close as my nearest bookshelf. Sue Feder was an avid mystery reader and well-known Ellis Peters fan and authority.

In 1988, she founded the Ellis Peters Appreciation Society and publishes the quarterly journal Most Loving Mere Folly devoted to the world of Ellis Peters and Edith Pargeter. Courtesy of Shropshire Abbey ; Wikimedia Commons; Open Road Media 9780446404532: Brother Cadfael's Penance (Brother Cadfael Mysteries) - AbeBooks - Peters, Ellis: 0446404535 About this title While Cadfael has bent Abbey rules, he has never broken his monastic vows--until now. Word has come to Shrewsbury of a treacherous act that has left 30 of Maud's knights imprisoned. All have been ransomed except Cadfael's secret son, Olivier. Conceived in Cadfael's soldiering youth and unaware of his father's identity, Olivier will die if he is not freed. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. About the Author: Ellis Peters is a pseudonym of Edith Pargeter, author of historical novels such as The Heaven Tree Trilogy.

Under the name of Ellis Peters she wrote crime fiction including The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael and a more "modern" detective, Detective Chief Inspector George False. Ellis Peters won many distinguished writing awards including an Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award of the Crime Writers Association. She lived in Shropshire, England. From AudioFile: Stephen Thorne is on familiar ground here with this twelfth installment of the Brother Cadfael series. And no one brings the details of medieval life so luminously alive as Ellis Peters. Brother Cadfael, Benedictine monk and herbalist, has had another life. Before entering the monastery, it appears he fathered a son he knew nothing about. When he receives news that this son is being held in the civil war raging between King Stephen and Empress Maud, his vows to God are put to the test. Many wonderful things have been said in the pages of AUDIOFILE, and elsewhere, about Stephen Thorne's exceptional voice and marvelous performances. I can only add that he narrates this series with perfection; it's subtle, fluid, and flawless. D.G.

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Question: Under what pseudonym did Edith Pargeter create the detective Brother Cadfael?
Answer: Ellis Peters