Leslie Charteris and his Saint books: some further thoughts

When the idea of featuring Leslie Charteris's Saint books first came to me, I expected the article to be a short one. I soon realised that there was far too much material of interest for even a long article, so I produced a second post about the Saint stories. That still wasn't enough to cover everything I wanted to say about the books and their author!

This article contains most of the remaining material.

A few green references
After finding many fascinating occurrences of the colour green in the lives and works of various writers including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I decided to see what I could dig up for Leslie Charteris and the Saint. While the results of the investigation are nowhere near what I found for other authors, some references seem worth a mention.

Leslie Charteris spent the last years of his life, from 1967 to 1993, in Englefield Green, a village in Surrey.

Leslie Charteris co-wrote scripts for Sherlock Holmes radio programmes with a Denis Green in the 1940s. 

Rather confusingly, some Saint stories are narrated by a Dennis Green, who appears to be a different person from the one above.

Simon Templar, aka The Saint, is known as the Robin Hood of modern crime; Robin Hood is traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln Green.

The Saint lives for a while in an apartment that overlooks London's Green Park.

The short story The Export Trade features a gang of jewel thieves called the Green Cross Bunch. 

In the short story titled The Green Goods Man, the Saint puts a stop to the activities of a conman who produces counterfeit pound notes, the 'green goods' of the title.

A few early editions of the Saint books were published with green covers:

More about Leslie Charteris's Saint books

The previous article about Leslie Charteris's Saint books goes into detail about what made these books so attractive to me when I first encountered them.  

Such articles are often part of the Defence Against the Dark Arts series, but there are some aspects of the Saint books that disqualify them: there is more to them than just exciting adventures and harmless humour, and it isn't all good.  

This article mentions a few more of the attractions and covers some of the negative elements.

Passive education
Judging by the effect that they had on me, the Saint books probably educated many of their readers.  Although I didn't appreciate this at the time, I now realise that the large amount of background information that I passively absorbed helped to expand my horizons and increase my geographical and general knowledge. I learned something about the luxury lifestyles of the very rich for example, including the names of some elite hotels and expensive cigars! 

The Saint and London
Although they didn't meant much to me when I first read the books, I particularly like the references to London streets, venues and other features that some of them contain. Leslie Charteris must have known the city well, and the details that he gives add interest and authenticity to his stories. 

One London street reference comes literally very close to home. I was delighted to see the name of the rather obscure little side street where I now live mentioned in one story: the Saint walks down it to get something to eat, and meets his old adversary Chief Inspector Teal! I wonder whether Leslie Charteris actually visited my street in person.

There are many references to London taxi cabs in the Saint stories:

Something about Leslie Charteris's Saint books

The books that I first read when very young fall into two main categories: those that have stayed with me throughout the years and those that I forgot all about until I started doing some archaeological digs in my memory in the hope of finding some more material for articles.

Low Notes on a High Level by J. B. Priestley was one such deeply buried book, and Anthony Armstrong's Prune's Progress was another. Lifting them out into the light exposed memories of some equally entertaining books that I hadn't thought about for decades: Leslie Charteris's Saint stories. 

I remembered how much I enjoyed reading these books as a child; I decided to renew my acquaintance with them and perhaps produce an article if I found anything to comment on.

The attractions of the Saint books
It seemed strange at first that I used to read these books so avidly as they were not in any of the categories that I liked best: they were not fantasy or science fiction, they were not children's classics and they didn't have a historical background. They didn't have much in the way of my idea of fascinating new information, and they didn't have much fuel for my imagination either. 

I started to recall some of the details and realised that the main attractions of the books were the daredevil personality, sophisticated lifestyle and exciting adventures of Leslie Charteris's hero Simon Templar, whose nickname is 'The Saint', and the – often rather juvenile – humour.

It was the people rather than the plots and backgrounds that most appealed to me, and I found the witticisms and Americanisms very funny. 

The Saint and some other characters
The Saint has a swashbuckling, buccaneering personality. He is strong, fearless and audacious; he is bold and brave, light hearted and carefree. He has nerves of steel; he is irrepressible; he is extremely resourceful; he is rarely at a loss and has a witty remark for every occasion. He has a strong sixth sense or intuition that serves him very well.

The Saint's appearance is elegant and immaculate. He has a privileged lifestyle, travels a lot and is always having exciting adventures and fighting villains, whom he calls 'the Ungodly'.

He resembles a Rafael Sabatini hero in some ways, which partly explains his appeal.