Simon Templar : The Saint

Leslie Charteris’s “The Saint” is one of the most popular characters of British crime fiction.

Charteris created Simon Templar in the 1920s, and “The Saint” appeared in fifty books up until 1983. Other appearances occurred on radio, including NBC and CBS series in the 1940′s which saw Vincent Price take the lead role. On the small screen there was a long running British series, starring Roger Moore and his successor Ian Ogilvy. Even the big screen has seen a fair number of attempts to portray “The Saint”, other than Val Kilmer, George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair have both taken the lead role.

Charteris never explained where the name Simon Templar came from. The 1997 film attempted to tell a tale of an organ picking the name from, Simon Magus, a magician, and the Templar crusaders. This though cannot be tied back to anything that appeared in the original Charteris novels.

The books do not give any details of Templar’s background, nothing is known about him until he first appears in “Meet The Tiger” (1928) and “Enter the Saint” (1930). There are hints about a criminal background but nothing more.

Simon Templar - Helgi Halldórsson - CC-BY-SA-2.0

There are two reasons as to why Templar became known as “The Saint”. Firstly his initials are ST, the common abbreviation for saint. This though would mean nothing if it wasn’t for his actions. Throughout Templar’s adventures he is the knight coming to the rescue of people in need, fighting crime and injustice. Templar would act as a Patron saint for those who required his protection.

Templar would always act within his own strong moral code, where he would not hurt, kill or steal from anyone who didn’t deserve it. This though doesn’t mean he acted within the law, in fact he would break the law to get his way if it was needed. There are other characteristics at odds with the moniker “The Saint”. Whenever he stole, he would take a fee, often a ten percent collection fee for his own personal profit, though the rest he would give to a worthy cause.

“The Saint” would leave a calling card at the scene of his crimes, or he would send it beforehand to instil panic in the criminal target. This calling card was a drawing of a matchstick man with a halo, thus playing up to his nickname.

Templar would also use different names when it was required to disguise his identity. To do this he would use his own initials, ST, to come up with names like “Sebastian Tombs” and “Sugarman Treacle”. The 1997 film once again took liberties and the use of Saint names is another invention for the film’s storyline.

Charteris never confirmed anything about the origins of Templar or his moniker, so much of this is conjecture. Evidence though points to the name, Simon Templar, just being made up, whilst “The Saint” came from the character’s initials.

Copyright - First Published 12th March 2008

Keywords - Simon Templar, Leslie Charteris, The Saint, The Saint Logo