Instead of repeating or rewriting The Saint and Leslie Charteris by W.O.G. Lofts and Derek Adley, or trying to summarise Burl Barer's The Saint: A Complete History or even, perhaps, giving away the best bits of a forthcoming Leslie Charteris biography, we thought that for a section dedicated to the life and times of Leslie Charteris the best thing we could do would be to turn to the man himself. What follows are some selected quotes from Leslie Charteris and keep checking this page, for you never know when you might learn some more about the life and times of Leslie Charteris.
On the origin of the Saint....
"Who knows where an idea comes from? The Saint was just originally a character who came to life in my head not so long after I started writing, but he was not the first character I thought of. He was, as a matter of fact, the fifth. I went on and created two or three other characters, each of them in an individual book. And then I suppose I got lazy, or I got the idea that it was better to continue and build up one character than to spread yourself around among a dozen. I looked back over the characters I had created so far and picked the Saint, liked him the best, and decided to go on with him."
On the Saint's evolution...
"I have never been able to see why a fictional character should not grow up, mature, and develop, the same as anyone else. The same, if you like, as his biographer. The only adequate reason is that so far as I know no other fictional character in modern times has survived a sufficient number of years for these changes to be clearly observable. I must confess that a lot of my own selfish pleasure in the Saint has been in watching him grow up."
On how true to life the adventures of the Saint are...
"Ever since I can remember, I have been feebly protesting against the criticism most commonly levelled at the Saint stories, which is that my plots are farfetched and implausible. It has done me little good to insist that in truth I have a rather poor imagination, and that therefore I find it much easier to steal plots from the newspapers than to dream them up. Obviously, I give them some artistic distortions and trimmings; but far more often than not the hard core of the story is something that intrigues me in real life.
I have even given my sources, sometimes, which is the kind of excuse that I don’t think a writer really ought to make...
I solemnly assert that even when I do write a story out of pure imagination, my mind works with such a faultless sense of realism that life itself will sometimes be constrained to make my story come true."
On his name...
"Since I am sure you will all want to tell your friends about this wonderful service, [A Letter from the Saint] and since my name occurs so often in any intelligent conversation anyhow, this seems like a good time to start you off on the right foot in the matter of pronouncing my name.
When I picked myself this distinguished cognomen it never occurred to me that such a superficially simple arrangement of letters could be so easily butchered and mutilated. It is somewhat humiliating for what should by this time be a household word to hear itself so frequently pronounced as"Charteers","Sharteers","Shartroos", and worse. There is no trick to it at all if you relax. The "Chart" is pronounced exactly like "chart", the thing you steer boats with. The "er" is pronounced exactly like "er". Put them together and you get "Charter", pronounced as in Magna. The "is" is the only catch, and should be articulated by placing the tip of the tongue behind the front teeth, if any, and exhaling in a sharply sibilant manner which should not however attain the dimensions of a whistle. If either tongue or teeth are not available, a freshs oda siphon may be employed to produce a similar effect. For the benefit of those really fascinated by the subject, the British aristocracy, several of whom dangled from this family tree, pronounced the name, in their quaint way, as "Charters"; the "i" being silent as in monocle."
On Saintly actors...
"I shall now state again, once and for all, that the Saint could have been superbly played, albeit in different styles, by such actors as Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, or Doug Fairbanks Jr.; and if this is my conception of the role, it should be obvious that such totally different types as Louis Hayward and George Sanders were hopelessly miscast. How Felix Marten, the French actor who has just finished the first all-French Saint picture, will turn out, I'm now waiting to see. In due course I shall tell you what I think, and this is one subject on which all other opinions are predestined for the wastebasket.
I can be wrong about lots of things; but on all matters concerning Simon Templar I can cheerfully proclaim myself the one and only infallible incontrovertible expert on earth. And this I shall continue to maintain, so help me."