Colin Dexter
Norman Colin Dexter is the British author of the
Inspector Morse novels. Dexter was born in
Stamford,
Lincolnshire, on
September 29,
1930. After studying classics at
Cambridge University he taught at schools in the
East Midlands. Forced in
1966 by the onset of deafness to retire from teaching he took up a post with an examinations board in
Oxford.
The story about how he started writing the Inspector Morse mysteries has been told and retold many times: in 1972 Dexter was on a family holiday in Wales. The weather was persistently wet. After reading two mediocre mysteries, he decided that he could do better than that. Dexter has received a number of prestigious awards for the Inspector Morse mysteries.