Albert Campion is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Margery Allingham.
22 Facts About Albert Campion
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Albert Campion first appeared as a supporting character in The Crime at Black Dudley, an adventure story involving a ring of criminals, and would go on to feature in another 18 novels and over 20 short stories.
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Supposedly created as a parody of Dorothy L Sayers' detective Lord Peter Wimsey, Campion established his own identity, and matured and developed as the series progressed.
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Albert Campion is a pseudonym used by a man who was born in 1900 into a prominent British aristocratic family.
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Albert Campion was educated at Rugby School and the St Ignatius' College, Cambridge.
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Ingenious, resourceful and well-educated, in his twenties he assumed the name Albert Campion and began a life as an adventurer and detective.
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Albert Campion is thin, blond, wears horn-rimmed glasses, and is often described as affable, inoffensive and bland, with a deceptively blank and unintelligent expression.
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Albert Campion sometimes engages in silly stunts, slapstick humor, and carries a realistic-looking water pistol instead of a firearm.
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Albert Campion is nonetheless a man of authority and action, and considers himself to be a helpful and comforting 'Uncle Albert' to friends and those in need.
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Carter and St Edmund Albert Campion were both graduates of Christ's Hospital school.
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In Look to the Lady the butler reveals to Lugg that he has deduced who Albert Campion is by a particular feature of his pyjamas which he has seen on Albert Campion's elder brother's pyjamas.
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Albert Campion has used many other names in the course of his career.
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Albert Campion's mother is mentioned several times and writes a letter in The Fashion in Shrouds, and Albert Campion borrows a car from his older brother in Mystery Mile, but neither of them appears in person.
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In Sweet Danger, it was mentioned that his brother was 'still unmarried' and therefore Albert Campion is likely to 'come into the title some day.
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From Mystery Mile onwards, Albert Campion is normally aided by his manservant, Magersfontein Lugg, an uncouth, rough-and-tumble fellow who used to be a burglar.
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Albert Campion is good friends with Inspector Stanislaus Oates of Scotland Yard, who is as by-the-book as Albert Campion is unorthodox, and in later books with Oates's protege Inspector Charles Luke.
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In wartime, Albert Campion is involved in intelligence work, and after the war he continues to have an unspecified connection to the secret services.
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Albert Campion has many friends and allies, seemingly scattered all across London and the English countryside, often including professional criminals.
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In Mystery Mile Albert Campion is subtly shown to be in love with Biddy Paget, around whose home most of the story revolves; Albert Campion is distraught when, at the end of the adventure, she marries an American, and his sadness at losing her is mentioned again in subsequent stories.
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Crime writer Mike Ripley completed an unfinished Albert Campion manuscript, started by Philip Youngman Carter before his death.
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The Albert Campion stories are generally adventures rather than true mysteries, as they rarely feature puzzles that the reader has a chance of solving; it is the characters and situations which carry the story.
22.
Albert Campion was played by James Snell, Richard Hurndall, William Fox, and Basil Moss.