The question most commonly asked of writers is 'Where do you get your ideas from' For me it's fragments – a picture; a piece of music; a line from a newspaper, or a beat from a book; a play; a film; a snatch of conversation overheard on a train. As often as not, it's a place. Usually somewhere I've come upon in my walking boots. Remote, typically. Hidden. Often derelict. But always it's somewhere with an atmosphere. Something that sets the Spider-‐senses tingling. These things can lie undisturbed amongst the leaf litter of the imagination for weeks, months, very often years. The fragment puts out tendrils; dark, creeping feelers, that quest blindly across the gloomy forest floor until they connect with another and make an unexpected connection. And that's what wakes you at three in the morning and won't let you get back to sleep. As a boy in South London in the 1960s, I had a much loved, and oft visited, aunt who lived in a Victorian tenement. She and the other wives there – for it was invariably women who did such work – daily swilled down their front step, and swabbed the communal staircases, with bleach and hot water. From just such a 'partial print' – the acrid, throat clotting scent of steaming bleach – the mind reconstructs the rest of the sights and sounds of the place at that period; girls skipping in the courtyard -‐ 'Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper.'; the Tallyman on his weekly rounds, collecting hire purchase payments. Everything on the 'Never-‐Never'… The next thing you know, nearly fifty years have gone by and, yet, somehow, also stood still, for <strong>Endeavour</strong> and DS Jakes are climbing a faintly familiar staircase, albeit one transported to Oxford; looking, in this instance, for a missing boy – and Jakes is pouring scorn on a place altogether too close too home as 'Never-‐Never-‐Land'… from which FILM 4: 'NEVERLAND' takes its title. When it comes to preserving the sacred televisual legacy we inherited, 'nothing but the best will do for <strong>Endeavour</strong> Morse' is the phrase that springs to mind. It's giddying company. What you'll be seeing across the four films represents the greater part of a year's work by a huge number of people – a phenomenal cast and crew. I am indebted to all of them. Being allowed to fill in some of the blanks in <strong>Endeavour</strong> Morse's history has been a great privilege. That such an adventure would also give me the opportunity to introduce D.I. Fred Thursday and his family, Win, Joan & Sam; Ms. Dorothea Frazil; Ch.Supt. Reginald Bright; and D.S. Peter Jakes has been a treat beyond any scribbler's deserving. Add to this the chance to renew an audience's acquaintance with a young PC Jim Strange and Dr. Max deBryn. <strong>Endeavour</strong> Morse has enjoyed a long and intimate relationship with his audience, and we never lose sight of that for a moment. Throughout it all, our touchstone and True North is Colin Dexter's original vision. Kind, wise and generous to a fault, he makes himself available to us throughout production. If a story or line of dialogue passes Colin's quality control test, then we know we're okay. ENDEAVOUR <strong>II</strong> 6
As FILM 1: TROVE begins with the Brahms requiem, so FILM 4: NEVERLAND opens appropriately with the sublimely moving Purcell 'Nunc dimittis' in G minor, and the Roseingrave 'Gloria'. 'As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.' I hope you enjoy the films. ENDEAVOUR <strong>II</strong> 7
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