Sarah Caudwell
Encyclopedia
Sarah Caudwell was the pseudonym
of Sarah Cockburn (1939 – 2000), a British barrister
and writer
of detective stories.
She is best known for a series of four murder stories written between 1980 and 1999, centred around the lives of a group of young barristers practicing in Lincoln’s Inn and narrated by a Hilary Tamar, a Professor
of Medieval Law
(gender unknown), who also acts as detective
.
, the left wing journalist
, and his second wife Jean Ross, who was partly the model for Christopher Isherwood
's Sally Bowles of Cabaret
fame. She graduated in Classics from Aberdeen University and read law at St Anne's College, Oxford. On coming down from Oxford she lectured on Law at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
. Having been called to the Bar, she practised as a barrister for several years in Lincoln’s Inn and later specialised in international tax planning at Lloyds Bank
. It was at this time that she started to write. Caudwell's three half-brothers Alexander Cockburn
, Andrew Cockburn
and Patrick Cockburn
are also journalists. She was the half-sister-in-law of Leslie Cockburn
and of Michael Flanders
. Journalists Laura Flanders
and Stephanie Flanders
, and actress Olivia Wilde
are her half-nieces.
She was one of the first two female students to join the Oxford Union, having, legend has it, dressed up in men's clothes to protest against its male-only membership policy. She was thus one of the first female students to speak in the Oxford Union's Debating Chamber.
She was a lifelong pipe-smoker, and inveterate crossword-puzzle solver, reaching the final of The Times
Crossword Competition more than once. For many years she lived in Barnes, London with her mother and aunt. She died in Cheltenham
.
She died of cancer
in January 2000.
, where four young barristers have their chambers: Michael Cantrip, Desmond Ragwort, Selena Jardine and Timothy Shepherd. While the last named only appears sporadically, taxes barrister
Julia Larwood, who works in the adjacent premises, is a regular visitor and is in effect the fourth member of the group. These characters are in some ways thinly drawn, never communicating in anything other than in an ironic tone, so that even when they are in deadly danger the atmosphere remains uniformly light-hearted. Even though the characters are sexually active, their cheerful friendship is sometimes reminiscent of the chummy gangs encountered in juvenile fiction.
Acting as a kind of parent to the group is the first-person narrator, Professor Hilary Tamar. Professor Tamar, a former tutor of Timothy Shepherd, also acts as the main detective, although other characters make contributions to the eventual solutions. Professor Tamar is frequently physically removed from the action and is kept informed by a series of improbably long letters and telexes. This distancing is amplified by Caudwell’s strategy of not specifying Tamar's sex and never specifying the reason for the strong bond which the character enjoys with the young advocates, notwithstanding the lack of any point of contact in terms of age, temperament, occupation or enthusiasms.
The books have a self-consciously literary style, including many references to the classics and other subjects of higher learning. One running joke is the narrator's absurd elitism, with lower orders such as Solicitors, Accountants, Tax Inspectors and Cambridge
graduates being frequent targets of barbed comments; one character is disparaged as it is suspected he had to work in order to earn a first-class degree.
The plots are intricate, carefully realised, and strongly tied to the locations chosen, these being Venice
, Corfu
, Sark
and an English village. The author’s expertise in tax law is frequently brought into play, inheritance law being relevant to financial motives for murder.
and with Lawrence Block
(and others) for The Perfect Murder
.
She also wrote a play, The Madman’s Advocate, which was given a rehearsed reading in Nottingham in 1995: a study of Daniel M'Naghten
's attempt in 1843 to assassinate Sir Robert Peel and the resulting establishment of the M'Naghten Rule as a legal standard for defining the sanity of a defendant in law.
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Sarah Cockburn (1939 – 2000), a British barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
of detective stories.
She is best known for a series of four murder stories written between 1980 and 1999, centred around the lives of a group of young barristers practicing in Lincoln’s Inn and narrated by a Hilary Tamar, a Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Medieval Law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
(gender unknown), who also acts as detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
.
Life
Sarah Cockburn was the daughter of Claud CockburnClaud Cockburn
Francis Claud Cockburn was a British journalist. He was well known proponent of communism. His saying, "believe nothing until it has been officially denied" is widely quoted in journalistic studies.He was the second cousin of novelist Evelyn Waugh....
, the left wing journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and his second wife Jean Ross, who was partly the model for Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
's Sally Bowles of Cabaret
Cabaret (film)
Cabaret is a 1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing National Socialist Party....
fame. She graduated in Classics from Aberdeen University and read law at St Anne's College, Oxford. On coming down from Oxford she lectured on Law at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth is a historic market town, administrative centre and holiday resort within Ceredigion, Wales. Often colloquially known as Aber, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Ystwyth and Rheidol....
. Having been called to the Bar, she practised as a barrister for several years in Lincoln’s Inn and later specialised in international tax planning at Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank Plc was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1765 until its merger into Lloyds TSB in 1995; it remains a registered company but is currently dormant. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies...
. It was at this time that she started to write. Caudwell's three half-brothers Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch...
, Andrew Cockburn
Andrew Cockburn
Andrew Cockburn is a journalist who has lived in the United States for many years.-Early life and family:Born in London in 1947, Cockburn grew up in County Cork, Ireland. His father was socialist author and journalist Claud Cockburn...
and Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, presently, The Independent....
are also journalists. She was the half-sister-in-law of Leslie Cockburn
Leslie Cockburn
Leslie Corkill Redlich Cockburn is an American writer and filmmaker who has covered a wide variety of international stories in almost every part of the globe.-Early life and career:...
and of Michael Flanders
Michael Flanders
Michael Henry Flanders OBE, was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known to the general public for his partnership with Donald Swann performing as the duo Flanders and Swann....
. Journalists Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders is a British-American journalist who presents the current events show GRITtv, broadcast weekdays on Link and Free Speech TV....
and Stephanie Flanders
Stephanie Flanders
Stephanie Hope Flanders, born 5 August 1968, is a British broadcast journalist, and is currently the BBC economics editor.She is the daughter of British actor and comic singer Michael Flanders and Claudia Cockburn.-Early life:...
, and actress Olivia Wilde
Olivia Wilde
Olivia Wilde is an American actress and fashion model. She began acting in the early 2000s, and has since appeared in a number of film and television parts, including roles in the serial-drama The O.C. and The Black Donnellys. She portrayed Dr...
are her half-nieces.
She was one of the first two female students to join the Oxford Union, having, legend has it, dressed up in men's clothes to protest against its male-only membership policy. She was thus one of the first female students to speak in the Oxford Union's Debating Chamber.
She was a lifelong pipe-smoker, and inveterate crossword-puzzle solver, reaching the final of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
Crossword Competition more than once. For many years she lived in Barnes, London with her mother and aunt. She died in Cheltenham
Cheltenham
Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...
.
She died of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in January 2000.
The Hilary Tamar Series
This series of four books, described as "legal whodunits", were written over a period of twenty years. Their primary setting is the top floor of 62 New Square at Lincoln's InnLincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
, where four young barristers have their chambers: Michael Cantrip, Desmond Ragwort, Selena Jardine and Timothy Shepherd. While the last named only appears sporadically, taxes barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
Julia Larwood, who works in the adjacent premises, is a regular visitor and is in effect the fourth member of the group. These characters are in some ways thinly drawn, never communicating in anything other than in an ironic tone, so that even when they are in deadly danger the atmosphere remains uniformly light-hearted. Even though the characters are sexually active, their cheerful friendship is sometimes reminiscent of the chummy gangs encountered in juvenile fiction.
Acting as a kind of parent to the group is the first-person narrator, Professor Hilary Tamar. Professor Tamar, a former tutor of Timothy Shepherd, also acts as the main detective, although other characters make contributions to the eventual solutions. Professor Tamar is frequently physically removed from the action and is kept informed by a series of improbably long letters and telexes. This distancing is amplified by Caudwell’s strategy of not specifying Tamar's sex and never specifying the reason for the strong bond which the character enjoys with the young advocates, notwithstanding the lack of any point of contact in terms of age, temperament, occupation or enthusiasms.
The books have a self-consciously literary style, including many references to the classics and other subjects of higher learning. One running joke is the narrator's absurd elitism, with lower orders such as Solicitors, Accountants, Tax Inspectors and Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
graduates being frequent targets of barbed comments; one character is disparaged as it is suspected he had to work in order to earn a first-class degree.
The plots are intricate, carefully realised, and strongly tied to the locations chosen, these being Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Corfu
Corfu
Corfu is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the second largest of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the edge of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered as a single municipality. The...
, Sark
Sark
Sark is a small island in the Channel Islands in southwestern English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. It is a royal fief, geographically located in the Channel Islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, with its own set of laws based on Norman law and its own parliament. It has a population...
and an English village. The author’s expertise in tax law is frequently brought into play, inheritance law being relevant to financial motives for murder.
Other writing
Caudwell collaborated on crime short stories with Michael Z. LewinMichael Z. Lewin
Michael Zinn Lewin is an American writer of mystery fiction primarily known for his series about Albert Samson, a distinctly low-keyed, non-hardboiled private detective who plies his trade from a modest walk-up apartment in Indianapolis, Indiana...
and with Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York–set series, about the recovering alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively...
(and others) for The Perfect Murder
The Perfect Murder
The Perfect Murder is a 1988 English language Indian film directed by Zafar Hai and produced by Merchant-Ivory. The film is based on the 1964 novel The Perfect Murder by British crime fiction writer HRF Keating and stars Naseeruddin Shah as Inspector Ghote, the leading character in Keating's novels...
.
She also wrote a play, The Madman’s Advocate, which was given a rehearsed reading in Nottingham in 1995: a study of Daniel M'Naghten
Daniel M'Naghten
Daniel M'Naghten was a Scottish woodturner who assassinated English civil servant Edward Drummond while suffering from paranoid delusions...
's attempt in 1843 to assassinate Sir Robert Peel and the resulting establishment of the M'Naghten Rule as a legal standard for defining the sanity of a defendant in law.