The Saint spotted at Ecotricity

I swapped energy supplier today to save the planet (always a good idea) and was surprised to see the familiar stick-man logo of one of my heroes, The Saint, in an email from them.

I have also spotted The Saint on Northampton railway station promoting local rugby union team Northampton Saints and by a car park in Helsinki.

The Best of The Saint

The Saint makes a very welcome return to print in the UK with the publication of two "best of volumes" - and just in time for Christmas too.

Each of the volumes contains a selection of Saint short stories covering his entire career of thwarting criminals and poking fun at the law, particularly Inspector Claude Eustace Teal, while enriching himself in the process.

The stories are all an excellent read and the weighty volumes (they are 800 and 600 pages long) are stupid value at a ridiculously low £6 on Amazon.

I started my Saint reading some forty years ago with an earlier collection of short stories, The First Saint Omnibus, and the new books are a good opportunity for new readers to become new fans.

The Saint in Helsinki

A work trip to Finland gave me the opportunity to spend a few hours walking around Helsinki to discover new sites and to revisit some old favourites, such as the Opera House.

Just behind the Houses of Parliament I came across the famous Saint stickman working as the doorkeeper to an underground car park. This is why I always carry a camera with me.

My Finish is pretty poor but I think that the car park belongs to the Houses of Parliament which, if true, gives that saintly figure serious recognition.

You can tell a lot about a man from his study

This was going to be a simple confession about my addiction to pens and the joy that I have had in liberating them from stationery cupboards and conference stands around the world but when I cam to take a photograph of those on my desk in my study the realization suddenly hit me that I have several other things that I could confess to and the evidence for these is for all to see in my study.


This is part of my desk, about half of it is shown here. I bought it in Habitat some 25 years ago when the Black Ash finish was trendy and I still like it. The simple answer to "why are there 2 PC on your desk?" is "Because the third is downstairs in the living room". By coincidence they are all IBM Thinkpads. Also in the picture are three mobile phones, again for good reasons.

The discerning viewer may be able to tell that between the two PCs are 5 pen pots, all from Muji, and a desk tidy with three pen compartments. A quick count makes that over 120 pens, and that does not include those in the two pencil cases just about visible on the left edge of the picture, nor does it count those in the rest of the house where Muji pen holders are more common that light bulbs.



This view of my study is far too revealing!

The piles of comics on the floor should not be a surprise to anyone, nor should the two long boxes of comics behind them. The other boxes of comics are elsewhere in the room. In the bookcase at the back of the picture are graphic novels, e.g. Sandman, Daredevil and Dreadstar. My plan is to get some custom built shelving, probably System 180 stuff (I have a lot of this including a desk, a wardrobe and a bed), to keep all my comics in but I need to do some work to design them first.

Also in the bookcase are a few books. Most of them are old, battered and written by Leslie Charteris and featuring The Saint. Hopefully the rumors of a new TV series will come true this year.

What looks as though it might be a black bag in the middle of the picture is, in fact, fourteen black bags in the middle of the picture, and there are at least seven other bags spread around the room. My addiction to cheap bags with corporate logos on is probably even worse than that for cheap pens with corporate logos on.

I could not show you the big bookcase in the room, nor the filing cabinet in the desk, otherwise I would have to explain why I need so much A4 paper that either has a corporate logo on each page or which has been nicely bound into a book with a corporate logo on the cover.

Time to go to the pub and think about things!

A few things to read

I'm not sure for certain if I'm managing to keep to my New Year's Resolution to read more books and comics than I buy but I suspect I'm well short of the target. Looks like I will be doing a lot of reading over the summer holidays.

Obviously none of this is my fault.

For example, somebody on The Saint forum was offering paperbacks recently so I had to get the five that I did not already have. And nice books always make good birthday / xmas presents. And there have been some special issues, such as the two Philip Jose Farmer books and the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser collection. And Rebellion has started reprinting old Judge Dredd, Nemesis and Strontium Dog stories from 2000AD.

Not my fault at all.

The Saint books by Leslie Charteris

My first encounters with The Saint were with the Roger Moore series in black and white in the mid to late sixties and I came across the books my chance. Our neighbour was clearing stuff out following the death of her father and wondered if the young boy next door would like The First Saint Omnibus. I did, and 35 years or so later I still have it, only now I have almost all the other Saint books too (including those based on the TV series which were not written by Charteris).

My favourite editions are the yellow Hodder and Stroughton books (pictured) which I like for their simplicity (later editions have full artwork), the stick-man and the period look.

The Saint is an impossibly good hero; he can run, swim, pilot a plane, shoot, throw a knife, drive fast, escape Houdini-like, pick locks, and disguise himself. And all this on a practice routine that seems to consist almost entirely of drinking cocktails and smoking. But while the character is a little far-fetched the books are a great read.

The Saint stories fall into various periods (e.g. the early London stories featuring Inspector Claude Eustace Teal and the later globe-trotting adventures) but the writing style is consistent and combines a good plot, very descriptive prose and some laugh-out-loud humour. Just the sort of thing you need on the train to Reading!