Murder at the British Library

If you happen to be passing through King’s Cross and can spare 10 minutes, drop by the British Library to see Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction, a small but perfectly formed exhibition about crime writing. The exhibits range from first editions of famous classics, such as a copy of Dorothy L Sayers’ The Nine Tailors that has been loved a little too well or the crispy pages of a 1926 issue of The Sketch magazine, the first to feature Miss Marple; to brief thematic studies on subjects like the development of the female detective over 150 years or the true crime sub-genre; to memorabilia such as private photographs of John Gielgud, who devoured trashy detective novels, revelling on the set of Morse or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immaculate manuscript for The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (what a gift to be able to write so well without need of emendation!).