12/6/1958 "What to do with an Ageing Detective"

December 6, 1958.  The issue of Time and Tide with this date had an unusual article by Margaret Allingham.  It was about Albert Campion, which was no surprise.  She had been writing about the aristocratic amateur detective with great success for decades.

What was unusual was that this piece was an interview between the author and her character.  And Albert has a few things to get off his chest, mostly concerned with the fact that he was getting too old to do the kinds of stunts she kept handing him.

"[E]verybody knows how old I am. You saw to that, fixing it as the same age as the century so we shouldn't get muddled."

Allingham was neither the first nor last author to record a chat with a character.  If you don't happen to have a complete run of Time and Tide you can find this one in her book The Return of Mr. Campion: Uncollected Stories.