I feel a bit of a fraud saying that this is a review. It is really a ‘I could kiss your feet, James Runcie, I enjoy these so much.’ And I’m not really a devotee of feet.

Honestly, for a lilting evocation of a gentler time, the early 1960s,this is the series for you. Though there are murders, but somehow they’re rather charming too.

I stumbled across Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by accident, but from the first page, I loved it. It’s not just because I can picture James Norton in his television role of Sidney, or Robson Green as Inspector Keating, but it is the life it evokes, the mysteries, the profound insights into Sidney’s world as a man of God, at times a slightly doubting one (?). They are uproarously funny, or so I have found The Problem of Evil, but also moving. His love for his wife is touching, his confusion as a male living with a female, hilarious.

I find myself pondering them, wondering  if the books are actually about friendship: he and Keating, he and his wife. Then there’s his feelings of compassion, at times sorely tried, his confusion at the behaviour of people,his beloved dog who dies… Arghh.

Do try them, enjoy them. They will remind you of good things, good people, and you will continue to picture Sidney and Keating  playing their weekly backgammon, and sorting out the problems of the Cambridge area. I am reading them out of order, I’m sure, but it doesn’t matter. I still guess at who dun it, and each stands on its own. I think I prefer the series to coffee creams, and that’s saying something.

I now have The Perils of the Night, and The Forgiveness of Sins to read. I do hope there is another on the way, or I might sulk. It has been known.

James Runcie is the son of former Archbishop Runcie.  He is novelist, documentary film-maker, television producer and playwright. He is Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and visiting professor at Bath Spa University. (where my daughter went to university and loved every minute)

The Grantchester Mysteries published by Bloomsbury. Read them, I insist.