Author of the prolific Constable series and inspiration for the hit TV series ‘Heartbeat’
Welcome to the website for author Nicholas Rhea. Here you will find everything you need to know about the Yorkshire-born author, his books, and his career.
Find out more about the hit TV programme Heartbeat here
News
Joffe Books and The Constable Series
On the 27th February 2020 Joffe Books acquired the rights to the complete Constable series by Nicholas Rhea from Giulia Bernabè, who represents Rhea, at Peter Fraser + Dunlop literary agency. Below is the official press release as published in the Bookseller.
Joffe Books has snapped up the ‘brilliantly entertaining and heartwarming’ 37-strong series of books that inspired the hit ITV series Heartbeat. The books feature "the feel-good tales of life as a village policeman in 1960s North Yorkshire", according to the synopsis. Rhea, the pseudonym of Peter Walker, has drawn on his experiences as a police officer in a rural Yorkshire village in the 1960s to write the novels.
Rhea’s daughter Sarah Walker commented: "When I heard about the offer, I cried solidly for about half an hour, especially when I read of Joffe’s commitment and true passion for the Constable series. Jasper Joffe’s enthusiasm for my dad’s work made me so proud and I just wish Dad was here to see it for himself."
Jasper Joffe said: "We’re immensely proud to sign these books and honoured by the trust the family have placed in us. We think they’re wonderful, heart-warming and funny, and we want a whole new generation of readers to enjoy them."
Widow of the late author, Rhoda Walker, said: "Peter worked so hard all his life writing books, his first being published back in 1967, and he never stopped. His family was his motivation to build a body of work that he intended to be a lasting legacy for his children and grandchildren. This contract with Joffe will go a long way to making that wish come true. Peter would be absolutely thrilled, as am I."
Giulia Bernabè of Peters Fraser + Dunlop said: "We couldn’t have wished for a more enthusiastic and supportive publisher than Joffe Books for Nicholas Rhea’s Constable novels. Fans of the Heartbeat series are in for a treat and new readers won’t be able to help falling in love with these charming and timeless stories of rural Yorkshire."
Rhea received the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award for his services to the association. He wrote over 110 books in his lifetime using as many of five pseudonyms before his death in 2017.
Joffe Books has commissioned new covers for the entire series, with artwork by acclaimed North Yorkshire artist Colin Williamson. Visit Rhea’s profile on Joffe Books here.
‘The Countryman’s Diary’ becomes ‘The Countryman’s Daughter’
Nicholas Rhea had wanted to write stories ever since he was a young boy in church in Lealholm, North Yorkshire, sitting in a pew behind a man called Major Jack Fairfax-Blakeborough. J.F.B., as he was known, was a local celebrity author and an expert on horse racing, the countryside, and all things Yorkshire. He had written a number of books, alongside a column in the Darlington and Stockton Times newspaper called ‘The Countryman’s Diary’.
He started the weekly column in 1922, and wrote it continuously until the week before his death at the age of 93 on New Year’s Day in 1976. By then, Rhea had become a well-known writer and an expert on Yorkshire folklore and countryside himself, and recognised that there would need to be a successor to the major. In fact he had written a hopeful letter to the editor, a Mr Ernest Pannell, a full three years earlier in 1973 in which he stated his long-held ambition for when the sad but inevitable time came. The editor’s reply, must have been a joy for him to receive. “One of the most constant problems I have had in my 12 years as Editor,” wrote Mr Pannell, “has been that of finding someone to follow J.F.B. – your letter brings a prospect of relief!”
Rhea’s first Countryman’s Diary column appeared on 10th January 1976 and he continued to write it every week, with his last one appearing just before he died in April 2017. Rhea and the major had written the column continuously for 95 years between them.
With this knowledge, Rhea’s youngest daughter Sarah, a writer herself, couldn’t bear to see such an historic column disappear with the death of her father, and therefore approached the D&S Times editor asking to take it over. However, she was neither a man, nor could she call herself a bona fide countrywoman, and so came up with a fresh, but recognisable, identity, ‘The Countryman’s Daughter’.
Sarah has written the weekly column since 2017 and pledges to continue to do so until, like her predecessors, she can no longer hold a pen. The question is, when that time comes, who will take over then?
