John Creasey: Ten Authors in One | The First of Many | Simple Facts | The Toff
Gideon of the Yard (as JJ Marric) | Department Z | Dr Palfrey
Patrick Dawlish (as Gordon Ashe) | As Jeremy York | Inspector West
Michael Fane and Dr Cellini | The Baron

The Toff - or the Honourable Richard Rollison - was 'born' in the twopenny weekly Thriller in 1933, but it was not until 1938 that John Creasey first published books about him. He was written originally to special editorial requirements and in the first few volumes no amount of re-writing and lengthening, even from 25,000 words to 60,000, could make him more than a rather heavy-footed 'Saint'¹. Once new stories were written for the novel form, however, the Toff took on characteristics all his own and became a kind of 'Saint with his feet on the ground'. It was in this period that the author began consciously to use the Toff to show how well the Mayfair man-about-town could get on with the rough diamonds of the East End.

His first police catalyst, flat-footed Inspector McNab of the Yard, soon gave way to a more realistic policeman, Detective Superintendent 'Bill' Grice. McNab hadn't seemed real to the Creasey, but Grice did, and has grown and matured with the Toff until today they are more friends than enemies. Bill Ebbutt, ex-prizefighter and East End pub-keeper - who began life as Bert, but between books was accidentally converted to Bill - has appeared in most Toffs, and his Salvation Army wife, Lil, in many. Some Salvationists told Creasey that such a marriage could not take place, but he always claimed author's licence. In these books, Lady (Old Glory) Gloria Hurst, the Toff's patrician and community-minded aunt, rubs shoulders happily with Grice and Ebbutt, to show that no matter what their backgrounds, people can live in complete harmony with one another.

The chief harmonising character in the Toff books is Jolly, the Toff's 'man'. There is an element of caricature in Jolly, of course, as indeed there is in the other characters (with the possible exception of Grice), and it is at least 20 years since he was first called an anachronism. Yet his popularity is as great with 'pop' fans as it has been with youths for several generations. He moves with the times a great deal more freely than many who criticise realise, and comes to grips with some intensely serious social problems, as in The Toff and the Teds (US Title).

Creasey had been trying to get the Toff published in the United States for 15 years before Pyramid Books and then Walker presented this character to American readers. Almost instantly 'the anachronism' was a success, and Walker sometimes publish as many as six Toffs in a year, ranging from very early books to those most recently published in England. He is widely popular, too, in France; in fact, the Toff was translated into a dozen different languages.

What gives the Toff his ever-fresh, ever-appealing quality it is impossible to say, unless it is that he likes people, and continues to live a life of glamour and romance while constantly showing (by implication alone) that all men are brothers under the skin.

* Paperback only in the USA.