Peter Haining

Interviewed by Mark Campbell

Peter Haining is the editor of a huge number of horror, crime and fantasy anthologies published over the past three decades. He began writing at school and has never stopped, moving from newspapers to magazines to book publishing, before becoming a freelance writer in the early 70s. Enthusiastic and prolific in equal measure, he is a name to be reckoned with in the world of mystery fiction.

I interviewed Haining years ago for the Doctor Who magazine Skonnos, as he'd penned several volumes on the series. (The latest one, The Nine Lives of Doctor Who, was published by Headline last year.) Meeting him again at his beautiful Surrey abode, a former brewery now transformed into a spacious family home with an extensive crime/horror library, I was delighted to find the same self-effacing, friendly chap I'd met back in the 80s.

His knowledge of crime writing, particularly anything to do with Sherlock Holmes, is encyclopaedic, and he has a knack of producing new and unusual anthologies with astonishing regularity. His latest, Death on Wheels (Souvenir Press), features short stories about the greatest threat to human life - the motorcar. But when I ask him for his favourite novel, there's no hesitation: "Wind in the Willows," he replies. "It uplifts you and depresses you at the same time. I've done nothing which comes within a million miles of that."

The Hero was an idea that had evolved towards the end of my time as editorial director at New English Library in the early 1970s. It was at the time of the America-China-Russia cold war, and the idea was that China had a weapon far more destructive than any other, but being the closed nation it was, there was no way a secret agent could get in. So the British authorities decided that if they were to put in an individual with no background, no record, maybe he would find something out - a man of initiative, but a Mr Everyman.

The book was told on two levels. There was his actual mission to China, and, because it was such an incredible story, a film company was making a film of his experiences. The book climaxes with the film taking place, the belief being that he died in tragic circumstances but managed to get his message out. The twist was that the whole thing had been set up by the American, Russian and Chinese authorities to keep the cold war going.

The film rights were optioned, but as so often happens, a script was produced and it never got made. That was my one taste of novel writing, although I have written short stories. But I became so involved in writing anthologies and non-fiction books that I never went back to it.

How did your crime anthologies come about? Have you always been interested in crime?

Like a lot of people growing up immediately after the Second World War, my interest in crime was split between the classics, like Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, and what schoolboys of that era read, which were the Hank Janson novels. Janson was a newspaperman involved in breaking criminal activities, ostensibly set in Chicago, although they were written by an Englishman called Steve Francis. Janson always got the women but it always ended '…' - they were suggestive rather than explicit, but to young boys like me this was pretty hot stuff. A wonderful artist called Reg Heade did the book covers - pictures of girls with very diaphanous robes. That's what you read under the blankets!

I don't know what kids swap around in playgrounds today, probably drugs, but the Hank Janson novels were the best thing you had to trade in those days. After twelve of these titles, Steve Francis, who was publisher, author, editor, the lot, was charged with obscenity at the Old Bailey. He went to Spain and continued writing, and when I met him in my NEL days, I said, "It would be nice to revive the Hank Janson novels for new readers - obviously these days you could be more explicit." But sadly he had sold the series rights to two guys, one who was very approachable, but the other one, who'd retired to Scotland, didn't want to know. So it never came to anything.

When I went into journalism I worked on the West Essex Gazette in Loughton, and the first week I was there we had a horrendous murder - a child was killed by this sad, middle-aged man. And the second week I covered a local court case, which concerned a particularly disgusting case of bestiality. So within a fortnight, I'd experienced the two extremes - the really revolting and the classic murder case. I suppose that gave me an interest in crime fiction.

Our main rival was the Chigwell Times, and their chief reporter had been Ruth Rendell. For a number of years she lived in my neck of the woods, Polstead, which is right next door to Boxford. I think it's probably fair to say she's done better out of crime writing than I've done.

Did you feel that there weren't enough decent crime anthologies around?

I felt that very strongly about horror fiction, because when I started in the mid-sixties, the only anthologies around were August Derleth's, in the States, who had been associated with H P Lovecraft and Weird Tales magazine. In this country there was just the Pan Horror series, and I thought a lot of them missed the point of what a good horror story should be. Like a novel, it should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and not just violence for its own sake. I don't like blood and gore and the rest of it - although I know it's hugely popular. But I think a good horror story should have all the ingredients of a good adventure novel - if you're going to have a monster, it's got to be part of the story, not the reason for it. That's why I began doing my own anthologies.

Also, I felt it was important that a horror anthology, like a novel, should have a theme - unlike the Pan ones that were just thrown together. The stories should develop one after another, so whatever the theme may be, you would start off at a given point and argue your case by the stories you used. I also believed that readers wanted to know something about the writer, so I introduced all my collections with details about the authors - I thought it gave the stories an extra richness.

As the stories developed, you were learning things all the time. I believe that when you write, every sentence should work hard, and the reader should be better informed about the subject at the end of the sentence than he was at the start. Maybe that's the old journo in me coming out, and I'm not ashamed of that. I learnt how to filter facts, and I like to use stories that do that. I sometimes get accused of using a story that is dated, but if it works within the context of the book, I'll use it. Also, I admit I've used stories more than once in collections, perhaps ten years apart, and I defend myself by saying that I'm probably talking to a whole new generation.

A few years ago, you edited a book called London After Midnight. How did that one come about?

I was in London one day and I saw one of these tours you can do, like the Sherlock Holmes one that takes you round the various places he visited, and I thought I could take that a step further. There are a lot of places in London associated with famous crimes, like Whitechapel and Scotland Yard, and the book was basically a collection of stories that took you around London, picking out what I thought was the best fictional account of a famous crime. We had gangsters in Soho, Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, the Chinese Tongs in Limehouse, each introduced with details of the locality, the things it was famous for, and how different it is now.

I've done true crime books as well, for instance the Sweeney Todd book, reprinted last year by Robson, which is a long-standing interest of mine. When I worked in Fleet Street I picked up stories about Sweeney Todd, and in the early days I thought he was a fictional character, but the evidence is against that. I also did a local book about Maria Marten and the Murder at the Red Barn, which took place at Polstead.

Tell me about your involvement with Sherlock Holmes.

A person who was very good to me in my early days of horror anthologising was a book dealer called Ken Chapman, now dead. Whenever he came across little treasure troves, he would ring me up and say, "You ought to buy this book, Peter - it may not be of use to you now, but it will be in the future." I always took his word, because he always proved to be right.

He rang me up one day and said: "I've just bought these four boxes of cuttings and scrapbooks on Sherlock Holmes, and I think there's a book in it." It was the lifetime collection of a solicitor and had everything to do with Sherlock Holmes from about 1910. I said, "I can't afford to buy this." But Ken said, "I don't want you to buy it, but if you can get a book from it, do it." So I went away and produced a book called - surprise, surprise - The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook. I got Peter Cushing to write an introduction, and the Sherlockians went bananas over it. It was also the starting point for another book I did, The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which brought together all the little pieces by Conan Doyle which are not in the collected volumes.

I was eternally grateful to Ken, and when he retired he decided to sell this collection. It was still too expensive for me to buy, but I said, "I'm so grateful to you for loaning me this material - is there anything I can do for you?" He said, "If you could write me a letter, saying the two books you did originated from this material, it would add an extra bit of credence to the whole thing." I was more than happy to do that, and I think the whole collection went to a University in the end.

And that's how you became involved with the Granada television series with Jeremy Brett?

Michael Cox, the producer, approached me on the strength of The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook, and asked if I would be interested in writing a book on the making of the series. I got very excited about the idea, and had a meeting with the people at Granada, and it all took off from there. Where they were so brilliant, and I've never come across anybody who's done it with quite the same thoroughness, was that they had a photographer who started taking pictures the day they began work on the series. In other words, they photographed the empty lot before they started building the set. They were building it next to Coronation Street, so you got this wonderful juxtaposition.

The television Sherlock Holmes did very well, and what was nice about it was that they didn't just want a book about their Sherlock Holmes, they wanted information on how the character had been created, and how he had been used in films, on television and the radio. A number of books I've done subsequently - a classic example is Hercule Poirot for Boxtree - they didn't want material about the prehistory of the character. But things don't happen out of the air - there's always a beginning. I'm a great believer in putting things in context, because I feel it pushes people off in different directions. Even in today's modern crime fiction, there are precursors to the toughest, most hard-boiled stories. It's happened before - it runs in curves. Having been doing these anthologies for thirty years, I'm very aware of that.

What was Jeremy Brett like?

He literally took that show on his shoulders - it was extraordinary watching him work. To say that it ultimately killed him is probably too strong a judgement, but it certainly took an enormous toll out of him. He is, undoubtedly, the definitive Holmes, and I think it will be very difficult for anybody to top him. The series was geared to being accurate as far as the original stories were concerned, and his portrayal of Holmes had all the nuances you find in the books - the manic bits, the quiet bits and the drug-taking.

Yet the extraordinary thing is that once he relaxed in the evening, he was a wonderfully sociable man. I recorded a two-and-a-half hour interview with him at this Manchester hotel, and he was full of fun and hilarity, chatting to the waiters and enjoying himself immensely. He was a gregarious man, but so focused when he got onto the set and began to work. You could see him changing as he took the character on, in a way I'd never seen happen with anybody before.

I don't suppose you ever met Basil Rathbone?

No. Peter Cushing I did, who was very quiet, very gentle, but determined to portray the character in the way he felt was closest to the original author's intention - whereas so many actors want to change a character and imprint themselves on it. If you're dealing with classic figures of fiction, if you want to really carry the audience with you, then go back to the original. It wouldn't be so popular or enduring if the original hadn't got it right in the first place.

Have you had any problems with 'Making of' books?

[Laughs] I did The Making of the Chief, and I was warned that Martin Shaw might be prickly. I remember the publicity girl saying to me, "Don't talk to Martin about The Professionals." They filmed a lot of it in East Anglia and when he wasn't working, he was learning to fly. It was obviously a big passion of his, and something I'd done myself, so we were able to talk about that. That was the key, if you like, and we were able to relax and discuss the making of the series, and the nice little stories came out.

So often, actors in TV series are confined to a ten-minute soundbite for the benefit of journalists who are brought on set one day, come for a few freebies and a quick chat, and go away again. They become like a short-playing record, chatting out the same thing for everybody. But if you're writing a book, you want a bit more than that - you want to go beyond those quotes. I try and be a good listener and let people talk about themselves, rather than interjecting myself into it. I let them portray the way they see the character, and make them feel at ease to talk, and pull out the stories.

I've worked with Christopher Lee, who a lot of people can find very intimidating and difficult. But I didn't find that. I guess the art of interviewing is to find the key to somebody, find what interests them, and go on from there.

I did a book on Maigret with Michael Gambon. I found him easy enough to talk to, but I sensed he wasn't particularly happy with the way the series was going. In fact, he only did the one, which was a shame because he was very good.

Of course, it's not just contemporary crime writing that interest you, is it?

No. I thought Charles Dickens' contribution to the crime genre had been sadly neglected, so I did a book called Hunted Down, which was a collection of all his short stories about crime. I love dipping into Dickens, and Wilkie Collins as well. Their books have stood the test of time - they were writing a mixture of hard-boiled, entertaining, little-old-lady stuff centuries ago.

Lastly, how do you keep thinking of ideas?

I'm a great clipper and tearer of items out of magazines, and these I file away under subject. I often find books grow out of those cuttings. I also believe that if you have an idea for a book and try it on two or three contemporaries and they say no, then fine, put it away and wait. Ideas have their own times, and certain ideas are appropriate for certain publishers. Quite often I will fire off an idea to a publisher I may not have dealt with before, and what's lost if they say no?

I've always moved on from one thing to the next, and the ideas just seem to keep on flowing, or things keep on getting offered to me. I'm a writer for hire - that's what I've been doing for thirty years, and that's what I enjoy doing.