Victor Canning: characters, themes and locations

Albany Barracks (Hidden Face)

Army camp close to the prison complex on the Isle of Wight, identified as housing the 70th H.A.A. Regiment (heavy anti-aircraft artillery). Canning himself had served in anti-aircraft gunnery units during the war.

Alfriston (Hidden Face)

Village in Sussex where Hansford lives and where he is murdered after Barlow's visit.

Allen, John (Hidden Face)

Alias which Barlow uses after his escape. He has been supplied with driving licence and passport in this name by Ross-Piper.

Ancona (Hidden Face)

Town on Italy's Adriatic coast where Barlow remembers having gone ashore into danger. Though we are not told the specific date, we can presume it was 1943 or 1944. Canning himself took part in the Italian campaigns and was in Sicily and Italy from 1943 to 1946.

Ascot (Hidden Face)

Racecourse in Berkshire. Arthur Fisher is afraid he will be "razored up at Ascot" if he gives away the name of Barlow's assailant.

Bangor (Hidden Face)

Town north west of Capel Curig. Ross-Piper sends the ambulance with Catherine there for the operation and follows in the car that Barlow later recognises as belonging to Daiken.

Barante, Baron de (1780-1866) (Hidden Face)

French statesman. Just why he should have given his name to a seafood omelette I have not been able to find out. This must have been a favourite dish, since Canning mentions it in several short stories.

Barlow, Peter (Hidden Face)

Hero and narrator of the book. He is an engineer working on large projects in Canada. He has been a prisoner of war and has escaped through France. We also know he has landed in Italy during the war, though we do not know whether this was before or after. Given his history of service in WWII we have to assume he was born in the 1920s and would now be in his early to mid-thirties.

Bazna, Elyesa (1904-1970) (Hidden Face)

Albanian spy, valet to the British ambassador to Turkey, codenamed 'Cicero', who was paid in forged notes from operation Kruger.

Beddgelert (Hidden Face)

Small town south west of Capel Curig where they find Sava's house, High Firs.

Berlitz School of Languages(Hidden Face)

One of Catherine's previous jobs had been to teach Italian at a Berlitz School.

Bettws-y-coed (Hidden Face)

Town west of Capel Curig where Barlow attempts to evade Catherine so as to keep her safe.

Bicester (Hidden Face)

Catherine's aunt has a cottage at Blackthorn close to Bicester.

Blackthorn (Hidden Face)

Village just off the A41 between Bicester and Aylesbury, north of Oxford, where Mrs. Lovell lives. Blackthorn had been home to Canning's own family for several years after his return from war service in 1946.

Bockworth, Mary Louise (Hidden Face)

Child of a warder at Parkhurst. She has put sand down the sink, and Barlow is clearing the blockage in her mother's kitchen when he escapes.

Boutade (Hidden Face)

See La Boutade.

Bryn Tyrch Hotel (Hidden Face)

A real hotel in Capel Curig, the place that Barlow stays with Catherine when they come in search of the artist Sava. "With a certain amount of Welsh reluctance they provided us with a late meal."

Cahors (Hidden Face)

Town in France, north of Toulouse and east of Bordeaux, where Barlow has a rendezvous with a resistance contact during his PoW escape bid. This leads to the death of Tom Ross-Piper, for which Barlow blames himself.

Camber Sands (Hidden Face)

On the coast south-east of Rye and beside Rye Golf Club where Barlow lands from the launch Nestor.

Canada (Hidden Face)

Where Peter Barlow is to work on a hydro-electric engineering project, although we are not told exactly where. He is arraested when boarding a plane for Canada.

Canterbury (Hidden Face)

Cathedral city in Kent where Barlow is to stay after landing at Rye. Catherine and he decide instead to go to her aunt's place near Oxford.

Capel Curig (Hidden Face)

Town in Snowdonia Nation Park, North West Wales where Barlow comes in search of the artist Sava.

Catherine (Hidden Face)

See Swinton, Catherine.

Chelsea (Hidden Face)

Hansford owns valuable Chelsea figurines which Barlow threatens to smash to punish him for his blackmail. The Chelsea Pottery is famous for figurines produced in the eighteenth century in imitation of Sèvres porcelain.

clavija longifolia (Hidden Face)

South American tropical plant that Barlow hides behind as the Palm House is closing.

Colt .45 (Hidden Face)

Type of gun that Hansford keeps in his desk and with which he is murdered.

Covent Garden (Hidden Face)

Address of Ross-Piper's London flat. It is also, of course, where Sutcliffe, the terrifying secret service chief of the Rex Carver books, has his flat.

Cowes (Hidden Face)

Town on the north coast of the Isle of Wight, famous as a yachting centre.

Crown Jewels (Hidden Face)

Drysdale describes Hansford as having enough nerve to steal the Crown Jewels. Stealing the Crown Jewels was the subject of a Victor Canning novella written in 1956, so the topic was on his mind at this time.

curlew (Hidden Face)

The signal for Barlow's rescue by boat is to be a curlew whistle.

Daiken, Henry (Hidden Face)

The internediary who passed messages for Barlow to Gypo in Parkhurst, and was then one of the assailants on the Isle of Wight beach and subsequent assaults. Ex-jockey. Barlow finds his address and by overhearing his phone call discovers La Boutade restaurant. Arrested with the other gang members at the end of the book.

Daily Record (Hidden Face)

Paper that Barlow claims to work for when he interviews Col. Drysdale. Presumably Canning was treating this as a made-up name and was not referring to the Scottish newspaper of that name.

Dordogne (Hidden Face)

Area of south-west France through which Barlow and his party travel on their escape from a PoW camp.

Drew (Hidden Face)

Ross-Piper's manservant, "an old naval stoker of the most exemplary dignity when on duty. His off-duty life was confined almost entirely to race-tracks and public bars." He was "a stiff, crab-like figure, an ancient real woollen cap pulled down to his ears. He had a way of standing that was vaguely gorilla-like, his arms well out from his long body. His face looked as though it had been cut from chalk and was the same colour. He only needed rings around his eyes and a big red mouth and he would have been a clown full of sad humour." Totally loyal to Ross-Piper. Eventually shot accidentally by Ross-Piper while driving the car during the showdown in Wales.

Drysdale, Lt.-Col. (Hidden Face)

Hansford's former commanding officer, now an alcoholic and in debt. He provides information about Hansford's crimes. Later he follows Barlow to Wales, tries to blackmail him, and is instrumental in Barlow's being rescued from Ross-Piper's crashed car.

Embdens (Hidden Face)

Breed of goose. It is a flock of Embdens that Barlow runs through on his escape. Typically Canning can't resist specifying the breed. Poultry-farming was listed in Who's Who as one of his hobbies at this stage of his career.

Exeter College, Oxford (Hidden Face)

Where Hansford studied, finishing up witha pass degeree in arts.

Fisher, Arthur (Hidden Face)

Ex-convict and small crook used by Ross-Piper to pass messsages to Barlow in gaol and collect the hire car from the Isle of Wight beach. Barlow bribes him with money to go to Ireland for the name of the intermediary Daiken, but Fisher turns up again at the engineered accident at Blackthorn but not at the showdown in Wales.

Freemason's Arms (Hidden Face)

Pub in Hampstead Heath where Barlow meets Arthur Fisher.

Gay Gordons (Hidden Face)

Dance in the course of which partnerships change. When Barlow and Catherine take refuge from Rance and Daiken at the dance hall in Bicester, they are separated during a Gay Gordons, allowing Catherine to be kidnapped..

Gerrard 47593 (Hidden Face)

Telephone number of La Boutade restaurant. Gerrard Street is nearby, hence the phone code.

Glenlivet (Hidden Face)

Ross-Piper's favourite brand of Scotch whisky.

Grange Chine (Hidden Face)

Beach area on the south coast of the Isle of Wight from which Barlow is to make his escape.

Gypo (Hidden Face)

Fellow prisoner at Parkhurst who passes escape instructions to Barlow.

Hahnemuhle (Hidden Face)

Brunswick printing press which replicated Bank of England paper, allowing the Kruger forgeries to go ahead.

Hampstead Heath (Hidden Face)

Area of London where Barlow goes to meet Arthur Fisher, having a close encounter with the police on the way.

Hansford, James Gurney (Hidden Face)

Man of whose murder Barlow is convicted. He has been blackmailing Barlow's late father. We later learn that he was born at Looe in Cornwall in 1910. His parents had kept a small hotel there. He’d gone to Exeter College, Oxford, and finished up with a pass degree in arts. From 1934 until 1939 he had held a number of jobs, finishing with a partnership in a small timber importing firm which had gone bankrupt. For five years before the war he had been a territorial in the Honourable Artillery Company, and when hostilities broke out had early been commissioned in the Royal Artillery. His army service had seen Dunkirk, North Africa and Italy, and then finally the Second Front. Later he had joined the Allied Control Commission. In 1945 he was still with the A.C.C. in Germany, and here he had run into trouble and been court-martialled. After his court-martial he left the army and lived in Paris for a while. By the beginning of 1950 he was back in London and without any visible means of support except a small antique dealer’s shop in Bond Street. But he seemed to have plenty of money, keeping a flat in London and his house at Alfriston, and he travelled widely over the Continent. This turns out to be due to his having supplied the printing plates and forged currency retrieved from Redl Zipf.

Hertfordshire (Hidden Face)

Where Ross-Piper runs a clinic.

Highburn Bungalow (Hidden Face)

Address of the rented house where Barlow hides after his escape from Parkhurst.

High Firs (Hidden Face)

Address of Sava's house, where they discover his body and printing plant.

Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945)(Hidden Face)

Head of the SS, and originator of Operation Kruger, the plan to forge Allied currencies.

Horsebridge Hill (Hidden Face)

Section of the main road between Newport and Cowes, close to the location of Highburn Bungalow.

Intelligence Corps (Hidden Face)

Lt.-Col. Drysdale's regiment, explaining his inside knowledge of the Nazi forgery secrets.

Ireland (Hidden Face)

Barlow bribes Arthur Fisher with £50 so that he can go to Ireland where "the racing is just as good". When he is not arrested with the other gang members in Wales, Barlow assumes he has gone to Ireland.

jockey (Hidden Face)

Daiken has been a jockey, and Barlow sees a horse and jockey badge on the bonnet of his car. Later he recognises the same badge on the car that Drew and Ross-Piper are taking him to Bangor in.

John and Mary (Hidden Face)

"John and Mary jogging along behind the old grey mare". Music hall song by Gilbert Austin, recorded in 1928. Henry Daiken sings a line of it when offered money to jog his memory.

Kew Gardens (Hidden Face)

See Royal Botanic Gardens

Kew Green (Hidden Face)

Address of Lt.-Col. Drysdale's home. Adjacent to Kew Gardens.

Kostavitch,Sava (Hidden Face)

Refugee artist used as a forger in Operation Kruger and repatriated to work on further forgeries by Hansford and Ross-Piper. Lives in North Wales where his plates and equipment are kept. He commits suicide just before Barlow reaches him, leaving a note in Hungarian which Barlow cannot read but which Catherine and Ross-Piper can. It is the fact that Ross-Piper knows the name Kostavitch that leads to his exposure as the chief villain.

Kruger, Bernhard (1904-1989) (Hidden Face)

Properly spelled Krüger, major who organised the counterfeiting team from concentration camp inmates of Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. Towards the end of the war the operation was moved to the village of Redl Zipf in Austria. In Canning's version of events, after the war Kruger vanished towards Switzerland with a fortune in Grade One notes and was never heard of again, but according to Wikipedia he was detained by the British and French, released without charge after three years and returned to work at the Hahnemuhle printing works.

La Boutade (Hidden Face)

La Boutade (French for 'the joke') is the fashionable restaurant in Greek Street near Soho Square, run by Giulio Latti and Carla Lodi. When Barlow eats there he sees the mural incorporating the face of Hansford and enquires about the artist, who turns out to be the forger Sava.

Lake Dinas (Hidden Face)

Where Sava's house High Firs is located just north of Beddgelert..

Lake Gwynant (Hidden Face)

Lake on the road north frm Beddgelert where Barlow has his final showdown with Ross-Piper

Latti, Giulio (Hidden Face)

Current husband of Carla Lodi and manager of La Boutade. One of the two assailants that Barlow encounters in the Kew episode. Eventually arrestd after Ross-Piper's death.

Llanberis (Hidden Face)

Town to the west of Capel Curig.

Lodi, Mrs. Carla (Hidden Face)

Hansford's mistress and housekeeper, witness at Barlow's trial. Barlow recognizes her working at the pay desk when he visits La Boutade restaurant.

Looe (Hidden Face)

Town in Cornwall, birthplace of Hansford.

Lord's (Hidden Face)

Cricket ground and headquarters of the MCC. Barlow wonders if he will ever be able to walk into the pavilion at Lord's again, implying that he had been a member.

Lot (Hidden Face)

River at Cahors.

Lovell, Mrs. (Hidden Face)

Catherine's aunt who entertains Barlow at her cottage in Blackthorn.

Maidstone (Hidden Face)

Prison in Kent where Barlow has served part of his sentence.

malaria (Hidden Face)

Barlow wonders if the fever he suffers after the escape is a recurrence of malaria, but does not tell us where he may have originally caught malaria.

Maltings (Hidden Face)

Name of the house in Alfriston where Hansford lives. Barlow is directed to it by a courting couple who later testify at his trial.

Matfield Road (Hidden Face)

213 Matfield Road, Poplar, is the (fictitious) address of Henry Daiken, "a street of neat little houses, backing right up against the wall of the Millwall Docks". Barlow confronts Daiken and obtains the name of La Boutade restaurant.

Medina River (Hidden Face)

River on the Isle of Wight running from Newport to Cowes.

MG (Hidden Face)

Make of car, originally an abbreviation of "Morris Garages", later associated mainly with sports cars. The car supplied to Peter Barlow by Ross-Piper is an MG saloon.

Milestone Buttress (Hidden Face)

Climbing area at the base of Tryfan in Snowdonia.

moorhen (Hidden Face)

Barlow looks at two moorhens in Kew Gardens and remembers hearing a moorhen call on the night Hansford was murdered. There are still plenty of moorhens on the ponds in Kew Gardens.

Musigny (Hidden Face)

Grand cru Burgundy. Barlow has a bottle with his meal at La Boutade.

Nant y Gwrhyd (Hidden Face)

Valley seen from Capel Curig.

Nell (Hidden Face)

Dalmatian dog that accompanies Arthur Fisher.

Nestor (Hidden Face)

Motor launch belonging to Ross-Piper, used to pick up Barlow from the Isle of Wight beach.

Newhaven (Hidden Face)

Sussex port through which Barlow drives on his way to Alfriston

Newport (Hidden Face)

Main town in the centre of the Isle of Wight. Where Catherine Swinton had been working before meeting Barlow.

Nicholson Street (Hidden Face)

Address in the Isle of Wight of the house Barlow escapes from when on a plumbing job.

omelette (Hidden Face)

See Barante

Once I had a secret love (Hidden Face)

Song made famous by Doris Day in the film Calamity Jane. Barlow remembers it as being popular in Parkhurst but with different words. As the song includes the lines
  All too soon my secret love
  Became impatient to be free
It is not hard to imagine how a group of prisoners might re-write it.

Oxford (Hidden Face)

Catherine's aunt has a cottage between Oxford and Bicester.

Pallancegate (Hidden Face)

Entrance to Parkhurst Forest, close to the prison complex.

Palm House (Hidden Face)

Huge nineteenth-century steel and glass contruction in Kew Gardens housing tropical trees and plants. Barlow hides there after visiting Drysdale, and is attacked when Latti and Rance break in at midnight.

Parkhurst (Hidden Face)

One of three prisons on the Isle of Wight, holding prisoners serving long sentences.

Parkhurst Forest (Hidden Face)

Area of woodland adjacent to the prison complex on the Isle of Wight.

Peacock (Hidden Face)

Public house in Maiden Lane near Covent Garden where Barlow meets Drew on his way to Kew.

Pen yr Oleu Wen (Hidden Face)

Mountain seen from Capel Curig.

Portsmouth (Hidden Face)

Port facing the Isle of Wight. We hear of a previous escaped prisoner picked up after trying to swim to Portsmouth. It is also where Ross-Piper has briefed the helper who takes the hired car to Highburn Bungalow.

Rance (Hidden Face)

One of the two men that attack Barlow on the beach after his escape, also one of the attackers in Kew Gardens and part of the crew in Wales who abduct Catherine and try to arrange the car accident. Barlow thinks he is just muscle for hire, and in the end he is found and arrested.

Rawlings, Major (Hidden Face)

Old friend of Mrs. Lovell's working at the War Office, source of information about Hansford's court martial.

Redl Zipfcave (Hidden Face)

This is the name Lt.-Col. Drysdale gives to the camp housing the Jewish forgers, but I have not found that precise form of the name anywhere else. Redl Zipf was the Austrian village housing a sub camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, and there was near it a complex of tunnels called Gallery 16 rumoured to hold forged banknotes.

Reuters (Hidden Face)

Mrs. Lovell's deceased husband had been a Reuters correspondent, and therefore she had "entertained a great many distinguished people, but never an escaped convict."

Ridge Copse (Hidden Face)

Part of Parkhurst Forest through which Barlow runs on his escape.

Rington (Hidden Face)

Name of the warder supervising Barlow when he makes his escape

Ross-Piper (Hidden Face)

Brain surgeon and ultimate villain of the piece, the man who murdered Hansford. We are never told his first name. He was "was the kind of man who had he turned a street corner and met a charging rhinoceros would have side-stepped and passed on, his keen mind at once paring the fantasy down to its logical explanation." Apparently a loyal friend of Peter Barlow, he organises the escape from Parkhurst. He tries to persuade Barlow to emigrate with false papers. In the end he turns out to be the brains behind the forgery scheme, using the profits to fund his surgical work.

Ross-Piper, Tom (Hidden Face)

Son of Ross-Piper, and army friend of Peter Barlow, with whom he has attempted a war-time escape. "Tom Ross-Piper and I had been working our way through France to Spain, I remembered we’d had an argument about poetry as we lay in some woods all day, waiting for night and the chance to hop a train. I’d maintained that there was true poetry in mathematics, that figures, not words, could best express man’s dreams. Tom hadn’t agreed and we’d never finished the argument, for he had been shot dead four days later and I had come on alone." Barlow says he blames himself for Tom's death, but Ross-Piper tells him not to. However at the denouement Ross-Piper declares: “Tom’s death made it easier. Rightly or wrongly, I could blame you for that. Yes, that made it easier. When Tom went and I had nothing left but my work—it came to mean everything to me. I even taught myself to hate you. It wasn’t hard.”

Royal Artillery (Hidden Face)

Hansford's regiment, and Canning's own.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Hidden Face)

Also occasionally referred to as the Royal Botanical Gardens in the book. 300 acre gardens south of the Thames. Barlow runs away from Rance and Latti to hide in the Gardens, taking shelter in the Palm House. He has paid threepence admission; I was told by the staff there that admission would have been one penny in 1956.

Rye (Hidden Face)

Rye harbour is where Ross-Piper plans to put Barlow down.

Rye Golf Club (Hidden Face)

Where Barlow is put on shore in Nestor's dinghy. Canning himself played golf there and the club features in his thriller The Limbo Line, as well as in E.F.Benson's Lucia books.

Sava (Hidden Face)

The name used by the artist and forger Kostavitch when signing his work.

Seaford (Hidden Face)

Seaside town in Sussex that Peter Barlow drives through on his way to Alfriston.

Shepherd's Chine (Hidden Face)

Beach area on the south coast of the Isle of Wight, close to the rendezvous point for Barlow's escape.

Snowdon (Hidden Face)

Sava has sent Lt.-Col. Drysdale a water-colour of Snowdon, which serves as a reminder of his address in Capel Curig.

Spain (Hidden Face)

Lt.-Col. Drysdale says that after the war he worked in Spain at a factory making briar pipes, but that didn't last long.

St. Catherine's Point (Hidden Face)

Southern end of the Isle of Wight with a prominent lighthouse.

Stubbs, George (1724-1806) (Hidden Face)

English painter, famous for paintings of horses. Hansford has a Stubbs painting on his wall, and Barlow is able to recollect in exactly later in prison.

Swinton, Catherine (Hidden Face)

Heroine of the book. She encounters Barlow when she walks into Highburn Bungalow, having walked out from her receptionist job after an unwelcome sexual approach from the manager. "She was young, about twenty-five, and her eyes were clear and unfrightened. She had dark hair, so dark that it was full of light and left blackness behind as a word without meaning. … Somewhere in memory her face seemed to have looked down at me from some painting, a long, oval face, and there was strength in it, in the high cheek-bones that gave the faintest hollowing to her face, in the warm red mouth that instinct told me could relax to tenderness or tighten to a vigorous damn-you." Her father was a diplomat and her mother Hungarian, which explains why she reads Hungarian fluently, thus being able to understand Sava's suicide letter.

Tenterden (Hidden Face)

Town in Kent where Peter Barlow and Catherine stop en route for Canterbury.

thuya (Hidden Face)

Moroccan conifer. Highburn Bungalow is identified by a thuya hedge.

Toplitz (Hidden Face)

Lake in the Austrian Alps believed to be where much Nazi loot was sunk, including notes and plates from the Nazi counterfeiting operation run by Major Kruger.

Topolski, Felix (1907-1989 (Hidden Face)

Polish-born artist who settled in Britain from 1935. Barlow thinks Sava's work resembles Topolski's.

Tryfan (Hidden Face)

Mountain in Snowdonia, incorporating the Milestone Buttress. Barlow refers to them as places his father had loved.

Wakefield (Hidden Face)

Prison in Yorkshire where Barlow served the first part of his sentence.