Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir

Author/Guide: Nick Triplow

Why a Booktrail?

1940 – 1982: The man behind Get Carter and so much more

ISBN: 978-1843448822
Genre: Biography/memoirs

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What you need to know before your trail

The classic film Get Carter was based on a book called Jack’s Return Home, and many commentators agree contemporary British crime writing began with that novel. The influence of both book and film is strong to this day, reflected in the work of David Peace, Jake Arnott, Russell Lewis, and the likes. But what of the man who wrote this seminal foundation work? Ted Lewis is one of the most important writers you’ve never heard of.

Long-time admirer Nick Triplow has fashioned a thorough, sympathetic, and unsparing narrative. The story of Ted Lewis carries historical and cultural resonances for our own troubled times.

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Travel Guide

Ted Lewis

Born in Manchester in 1940, he grew up in the tough environs of postwar Humberside, attending Hull Art School before heading for London. His life described a cycle of obscurity to glamour and back to obscurity, followed by death at only 42. He sampled the bright temptations of sixties London while working in advertising, TV, and films; he encountered excitement and danger in Soho drinking dens among various gangland haunts. He wrote for Z Cars and had eight books published. Alas, the life of Ted Lewis fell apart, his marriage ended and he returned to Humberside and an all too early demise. Getting Carter is a meticulously researched and riveting account of the career of a doomed genius.

Author research: Barton

Living in Barton, as Lewis had for most of his life, I couldn’t really help but research on location. He’s everywhere, in the pubs, the places he lived and the places he wrote about. But there were numerous trips to London, Essex, the Lincolnshire coast, the BBC archive, and across the country to interview former friends and associates. Much of the book is about the kinds of unfashionable places Lewis wrote about and you certainly get a feel for them by being there.

Key locations explained:

Stretford, Manchester, where Lewis was born a stone’s throw from the street where LS Lowry lived and where Johnny Marr first knocked on Morrissey’s front door.

The riverbank close to Barton upon Humber. Lewis’s childhood playground and the setting for Jack Carter’s death in the novel. (The Barton Ted Lewis Group conducts walking tours around the town periodically, giving visitors the chance to get to know the place and his relationship to it first-hand.)

The steelworks at Scunthorpe. When Jack Carter first enters his home town at the opening of Jack’s Return Home, the novel that would become Get Carter, the steelworks glows and sparks in the darkening sky.

The Minerva, Hull, an old pub by the river with a great tradition and the place where Lewis would sink a couple before catching the Humber Ferry back home to Barton.

Wicken Bonhunt, Essex. The location where most of Jack’s Return Home was written. A picturesque village and the place where many of the Yellow Submarine parties were held during the course of the production in 1967/68.

The six mile stretch of deserted beach north of Mabelthorpe close to where Lewis lived, which became the setting for his final novel, GBH. It’s also the location for a short artist’s film, Memory of Water, made by Gillian Hobson.