Writer, Hotelier and Painter

Last Novel

«The trouble with this screamingly smug little country», said my Aunt Emma, «is that nothing ever happens!» - So  the last crime novel by Paul Townend begins. 

about

Paul Townend (1925 - 2009)
spent his childhood and youth in Eastbourne and London, served in the Second World War as an officer in the Royal Naval Air Force. After the war, he travelled to Central Switzerland as a tour guide. In Obwalden, he ran a hotel on Lake Sarnen together with his wife Xenia Dansky. Outside the tourist season he worked as a ghost writer for a famous British crime novelist, published four of his own crime novels and painted numerous watercolours of Swiss landscapes.

Paintings

By selling numerous watercolours, he was able to supplement his old-age pension and thus visit his homeland (Sussex, Kent, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, West Midlands, London) frequently. At the same time he was commonly very much accepted by the locals.


Portrait Of A Swiss Crime:

amazon: paperback =  979-8785959996  (ISBN-13): £9,90
amazon: bound book with a few watercolours =  979-8787220858 (ISBN-13): £33,90 and as eBook at amazon

At this moment I'm trying to recognise my fathers hand written autobiography. Next spring I'll translate and publish it as self-publisher, september 2024

 

Father, hotelier, author and story teller

Father liked his guests. Hotel guests and hotel staff came from many countries and came from different social, cultural and economic backgrounds. And they made reservations, ordered, complained and praised in different languages.

 

But they all had stories.

 

And he was able to elicit these from them over an aperitif at the hotel bar, when greeting them or over a glass of wine in the evening. By asking them. As a hotelier, author and painter he showed an interest in people and their experiences. Even the very ordinary ones. Of course, he also told them his own. And he had many. None were made up. For this, he had his books - two books for young people, two travel books, a family history, a collection of short stories and four crime novels. 

 

I am delighted  to translate and publish some of his texts in German. And I hope to bring some joy to one or two former guests of the Hotel Waldheim on Lake Sarnen.

Marcus Townend