HM Prison Dartmoor - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • An escaped convict from Dartmoor figures in Nevil Shute's first novel Marazan, published in 1926.
  • Decline and Fall, a novel by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928 makes thinly disguised references to Dartmoor Prison.
  • Dartmoor Prison is mentioned in The Thirteen Problems, a short story collection written by Agatha Christie, and first published in 1932. Christie's The Sittaford Mystery (1931) is set on Dartmoor and features an escaped prisoner.
  • Arthur Conan Doyle made reference to 'Princetown Prison' in four stories that he wrote between 1890 and 1903. In The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), an escaped prisoner from Princetown serves as a red herring for Holmes and Watson.
  • Dressed to Kill, A 1946 Sherlock Holmes film uses Dartmoor Prison in the plot as the supposed location where three music boxes were made that contain a secret code for a criminal gang.
  • Referenced in Bob Miller's song, Twenty-One Years.
  • In the Tales of Old Dartmoor episode (recorded in 1956) of The Goons radio comedy series, Grytpype-Thynne arranges for the prison to put to sea to visit the Château d'If in France as part of a plan to find the treasure of the Count of Monte Cristo hid there. A cardboard replica is left in its place, which is left standing after the original Dartmoor Prison sinks with all hands at the end of the episode.
  • In an episode of The Saint television series entitled 'Escape Route' (1966), Simon Templar (Roger Moore) is sent to Dartmoor to uncover a planned escape.
  • Comedy Band The Barron Knights' 1978 UK #3 hit single A Taste Of Aggro, a medley of parodies, included a version of The Smurf Song featuring, in place of the Smurfs, a group of bank robbers from Catford who have escaped from Dartmoor Prison.
  • In 1988, the prison played host to a storyline in EastEnders, where Den Watts (played by Leslie Grantham) was being held on remand for arson. He was also joined for some of the storyline by Nick Cotton (played by John Altman), who was imprisoned for a different offence. The prison was called Dickens Hill.
  • Dartmoor is frequently mentioned in the Agent Z series of comical children’s books written by Mark Haddon.
  • Dartmoor prison is implicated in the local Dartmoor 'Hairy hands' ghost story/legend.
  • Dartmoor prison plays a central role in The Lively Lady, American author Kenneth Roberts' 1931 historical novel taking place during The War of 1812
  • In the first episode of the second series of James May's Man Lab, James May and Oz Clarke were demonstrating map-reading skills by pretending to escape from Dartmoor prison and cross Dartmoor to their escape car (although they had to start their escape from outside the prison grounds as they were not allowed permission inside the prison).
  • "We shot music, call it murder on the dancefloor, and we got more bars than wandsworth and dartmoor" - Dartmoor Prison, mentioned in Devlin's song Shot Music (May 10, 2010)

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