Birth, Education and Early Career
Alleyn was reportedly educated at Eton and Oxford, and worked in the British Foreign Service for a year (1919–1920) before joining the Metropolitan Police. A much later novel, Scales of Justice (1955), gives sketchy details of this period in Alleyn's life. The reasons for the switch in careers are never made explicit.
Early in his police career, Alleyn wrote a textbook that became widely admired: Principles and Practice of Criminal Investigations, by Roderick Alleyn, M.A. (Oxon), C.I.D. (Sable and Murgatroyd, 21s), which is mentioned in a footnote to Chapter 6 of Vintage Murder (1937).
In the first few novels, Alleyn is in his early forties. In the first, A Man Lay Dead (1934), Nigel Bathgate (Alleyn's future Watson) is clearly stated to be twenty-five, and Alleyn is much older, judging by the tone of his remarks to Bathgate. In the second, Enter a Murderer (1935), there is a minor inconsistency, in that Bathgate appears to be slightly younger than before. Bathgate says that he has been working as a journalist for only 15 months, ever since he 'came down' (that is, graduated) from Trinity College, Cambridge. However, Alleyn comments that it is almost 20 years since he (Alleyn) came down from Oxford. Assuming both gentlemen graduated with a typical three-year Oxbridge degree at around age 21, then in 1934 or 1935 Bathgate is about 22 or 23 and Alleyn is about 20 years older, indicating his birth was around 1893 or 1894.
The fifth novel, Vintage Murder (1937), is explicitly set in New Zealand in June 1936—according to an epilogue dated September 1936 and set three months after the novel's action. In Chapter 16, Alleyn states his age, while speaking to a teenager: 'Rude you think? I'm twenty-five years older than you. Old gentlemen of forty-two are allowed to be impertinent. Especially when they are policemen.'
Vintage Murder (1937) also indicates Alleyn spent three years in the army after graduating, presumably during World War I. Nowhere in the series are details of this military service ever given. Immediately after the army, he spent a year in the British Foreign Service.
The sixth novel, Artists in Crime (1938), rapidly follows the action of Vintage Murder (that is, occurs in late 1936), and contains letters between Lady Alleyn and her younger son during his return to England. These show that Alleyn's mother turns 65 in 1936, and that Alleyn is about 20 years younger. The same correspondence shows that Lady Alleyn's birthday is on the seventh of September, and that Alleyn's (forty-third) birthday follows soon after. Hence, from information in the fifth and sixth novels, Alleyn was probably born in September or October, 1893.
Read more about this topic: Roderick Alleyn, Background and Early Life
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