| Description | This Sub-series contains material linked to Clive Exton's proposed treatments and adapatations for a series around Nigel Strangeways, the detective created by Cecil Day-Lewis under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. Day-Lewis decided to supplement his income from poetry by writing a detective novel in 1935. That novel, A Question of Proof, in which he created Nigel Strangeways, an amateur investigator and gentleman detective who, as the nephew of an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, has the same access to, and good relations with, official crime investigation bodies as those enjoyed by other fictional sleuths such as Ellery Queen, Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey.[7] This was followed by nineteen more crime novels. Nigel Strangeways is initially based on WH Auden but is toned down in later novels and shares a similar crimonlogy pedigree with his ficitonal compatriots in Ellery Queen, Philo Vance, Inspector Alleyn., and the like. The success of the first Strangeways novels allowed Day-Lewis to earn his living from writing, Four subsequent crime novels: A Tangled Web, Penknife In My Heart, The Deadly Joker, The Private Wound - do not feature Strangeways.
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| Individual or organisational biography | From his earliest days working on ITV's Armchair Theatre productions to his dramatisations for popular, lavishly produced series such as Agatha Christie's Poirot and Jeeves & Wooster, Clive Exton was a screenwriter who brought intelligence and depth to television drama. (see Saturday, 18 August 2007 Independent Newspaper).
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| Custodial History | The papers have been in the possession of Mrs Mara Exton, since the death of her husband Clive Exton. The papers are donated to University of the Arts London in March 2010. |