Family Morse's father was a taxi driver. In the episode of the television adaptation
Cherubim and Seraphim, it is revealed that Morse's parents divorced when he was 12. He remained with his mother until her death three years later, upon which he had to return to his father. Morse had a dreadful relationship with his stepmother Gwen. He claims that he only read poetry to annoy her, and that her petty bullying almost drove him to suicide. He has a half-sister named Joyce with whom he is on better terms. Morse was devastated when Joyce's daughter Marilyn took her own life. Morse prefers to use only his surname, and is generally evasive when asked about his first name, sometimes joking that it is
Inspector. "Everyone just calls me Morse. I do have a first name." In
The Dead of Jericho it is remarked that "he had never quite forgiven his parents for christening their only offspring as they had." Also in
The Dead of Jericho, and in
The Wench Is Dead, it is noted that his initial is E. At the end of
Death Is Now My Neighbour, his name is revealed to be Endeavour. Two-thirds of the way through the television episode based on the book, he gives the cryptic clue "My whole life's effort has revolved around Eve, nine letters". In the series, it is noted that Morse's reluctance to use his Christian name led to his receiving the nickname
Pagan (Deceived by Flight) while at
Stamford School (which
Colin Dexter, the author of the Morse novels, attended). Dexter was a fan of
cryptic crossword and named Morse after champion setter
Jeremy Morse, one of Dexter's arch-rivals in writing crossword clues. Dexter used to walk along the bank of the
River Thames at Oxford, opposite the boathouse belonging to 22nd Oxford Sea Scout Group; the building is named
T.S. Endeavour.
Education Although details of Morse's education are kept vague, it is hinted that he won a scholarship to study at
St John's College, Oxford. He lost the scholarship as the result of poor academic performance stemming from a failed love affair, which is mentioned in the second episode of the third series, "The Last Enemy", and recounted in detail in the novel
The Riddle of the Third Mile, Chapter 7. Further details are revealed piece-by-piece in the prequel series. He often reflects on such renowned scholars as
A. E. Housman who, like himself, failed to get an academic degree from Oxford.
Career After university, he entered the army on
National Service. This included serving in
West Germany with the
Royal Corps of Signals as a
cipher clerk. Upon leaving, he joined the police Due to his manners and bearing, he is sometimes considered
gentleman detective, the staple of British
detective fiction, in contrast to the working-class lifestyle of his assistant
Lewis. In the novels, Lewis is
Welsh, but in the TV series this is altered to a
Tyneside (
Geordie) background, appropriately for the actor
Kevin Whately. Morse is in his forties at the start of the books (
Service of all the Dead, Chapter Six: "… a bachelor still, forty-seven years old …"), and Lewis slightly younger (e.g.
The Secret of Annexe 3, Chapter Twenty-Six: "a slightly younger man – another policeman, and one also in plain clothes"). John Thaw was 45 at the beginning of shooting the TV series and Kevin Whately was 36. Morse's relationships with authority, the establishment, bastions of power and the status quo, are markedly ambiguous, as are some of his relations with women. He is frequently portrayed as patronising female characters, and once stereotyped the female sex as not naturally prone to crime, being caring and non-violent, but also often empathises with women. He is not shy to show his liking for attractive women and often dates those involved in cases. Indeed, a woman he falls in love with sometimes turns out to be the culprit. Morse is highly intelligent. He is a
crossword addict and dislikes grammatical and spelling errors; in every personal or private document that he receives, he manages to point out at least one mistake. He claims that his approach to crime-solving is deductive, and one of his key tenets is that "there is a 50 per cent chance that the person who finds the body is the murderer". Morse uses immense intuition and his fantastic memory to apprehend the perpetrator. Among Morse's conservative tastes are that he likes to drink
real ale and
whisky, (which he calls “brain food”) and likes to drink while thinking about cases despite doctors’ advice on cutting down. In the early novels, Morse drives a
Lancia. Morse is portrayed as being an
atheist. However, in some scenes, he does entertain the possibility of God and/or quote the Bible from memory, agreeing with the phrases, as he does with lines from various literary books/texts. ==Novels==