“A GOOD-LOOKING young man with crisp, curly fair hair and big light-blue eyes. Laziness, and self indulgence, had thickened his neck, had fattened his cheeks and chin, blurring, like a gauze, their original fineness, but he remained unusually personable in spite of that.

"His tastes were literary; his conversation was witty; his manners were impeccable. And by the end of the first five minutes of their acquaintance, Fen detested him.”

This is a description of a character in a Gervase Fen detective story, The Golden Mean by Edmund Crispin.

It is also a humorous, miniature self-portrait. This self-deprecating sense of humour is a familiar characteristic of Crispin’s Whodunnit books.

Edmund Crispin was the pen name of the multi-talented (Robert) Bruce Montgomery who was born in Chesham Bois in 1921. He probably chose to use a pen name because he wanted to save his real name for his work as a composer and musician. When he wrote his first novel as a 23-year-old undergraduate at Oxford in 1943 he had already published some compositions, and was in great demand as a conductor, piano accompanist, and organist.

Before he was 40, he had published eight detective novels, one book of short stories and edited several collections of Science Fiction which helped to establish the credibility of the genre. He had completed around 100 compositions of choral and orchestral work, organ music, incidental music for radio and numerous film scores.

He composed music for many of the British comedies of the 1950s including the Doctor in the House series and the first Carry On films. The march composed for Carry On Sergeant became the series theme tune. His distinctive march for Hattie Jacques’ matron in Carry On Nurse was comedy gold and will be familiar to anyone over the age of 55. Younger readers can look it up on You Tube!

The first surviving composition by Montgomery is a hymn tune titled Chesham Bois. It was printed privately in 1934 when he was 13 and was first performed at the Amersham Free Church where his father, Robert, was choirmaster. Robert (from Belfast) first met his wife, Marian Jarvie (from Edinburgh), in the choir of St Andrews in Ealing. They married there in 1910. The newlyweds settled in a new house, Blackwood (named after an ancestor of Marion’s) at the corner of Holloway Lane, Stubbs Wood and Bois Lane. Three girls, Nora, Sheila and Elspeth were born at the house, followed five years later by their only son, Bruce.

Robert was a senior civil servant at the India Office and the family prospered. When Bruce was two, they moved to a larger house, Domus, (now Little Tawny) on Stubbs Wood, designed by his father, which had an acre of garden and included a nine-hole putting course and a tennis court. Bruce had little time for sport, however. A disability from birth caused both feet to turn inwards, which meant he wore callipers and underwent numerous operations before he was 14. The operations were relatively successful although he always walked with a limp and lacked confidence in his appearance.

His mother, however, encouraged him to learn the piano and he was soon proficient on her baby grand. She was also a keen bridge player and all the family played regularly, often playing a hand or two before the children left for school.

Bruce was completely spoilt by his mother, perhaps understandably given his early health problems. When his sisters were away at boarding school in Devon, he must have been quite solitary, but he had many happy memories of Chesham Bois. According to his letters he looked back with “pleasure and gratitude” on his “conventionally middle-class” upbringing.

His first school was the private, co-educational, Chesham Bois School, now Heatherton House, called a ‘dame school’ by his biographer David Whittle. This would have greatly offended the Misses Harrison who founded the school and set high educational standards. At the age of seven he attended the academic boys’ school Northwood Prep, going there by train, before winning a scholarship to Merchant Taylors where once again he excelled at all subjects. Here he also started to play the organ after his orthopaedic surgeon had suggested the pedal work might help with his feet. In 1936 he gave his first organ recital at the Free Church before playing Ave Maria at Elspeth’s wedding the following year.

In 1937 Bruce went to Europe for the first time, travelling independently to Paris and Dresden where he listened to Wagner and was oblivious of the impending war. He was awarded a scholarship to read French and German at St John’s College Oxford. Before “going up” he volunteered at the Rickmansworth Food Office. Here he met a beautiful 17-year-old actress, Muriel Pavlow, who lived with her parents in Rickmansworth. She later had a successful film-career starring with Dirk Bogarde in Doctor in the House (with score composed by Bruce Montgomery) and as Douglas Bader’s loyal wife in Reach for the Sky.

They became firm friends, watching the latest movies at the Odeon in Rickmansworth and the Regent in Amersham. They would also have dinner at the Mill Stream Restaurant (where Ambers is today). As a true gentleman, Bruce would always see Muriel home before getting the last train back to Amersham. A shared interest was Sally Latimer’s Amersham Playhouse, where Bruce frequently provided accompaniment on the piano and was billed as the musical director for Aladdin in 1939. The friendship continued after the Montgomery family moved to Devon and Bruce then “went up” to Oxford.

Muriel frequently appeared in rep at the Oxford Playhouse. Bruce loved to show her off to his friends, but romance did not really blossom. He may have wanted to marry Muriel, but she was determined to follow her career and later married the actor Derek Farr. Although attractive and funny Bruce never had a successful long-term relationship. In 1977, the year before he died, he finally married his long-suffering secretary, Ann Clement.

To be continued.