Midlife heroes #1: DCS Foyle from Foyle's War

Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle was born in 1893. He fought in the trenches and married several months before the armistice in early 1918. His wife, Rosalind, died in 1932. So Foyle is 46 when the Second World War begins – a fine age. Did we mention he brought up their son, Andrew, all by himself? Well, we’re mentioning it now.

Foyle’s ‘beat’ is Hastings. (You should go there, it’s nice – apart from Warrior Square, which smells of wee.) He can drive but chooses not to because he wants Honeysuckle Weeks to drive him instead. This is because he likes the way she drives – the way she kicks down on the accelerator pedal with her heavy black boots; turns the steering wheel with a great sweep of her Land Girl arms; sings ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ in a lusty contralto while shaking her hair free of its simple metal clips so that it CASCADES like a waterfall of pure hair down her slender (but not too slender) khaki shoulders.