Turpin's first novel Doggett's Tours was a comic, lightly fictionalized account of his experiences leading groups of English tourists through France, Switzerland, and Italy.
[5] Soon after the end of World War II, he wrote two stage adaptations of novellas by Henry James: The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers.
The novel was an account of an affair between a self-centered Englishman with literary tastes and an equally self-centred American girl and was set in London, Paris, and New York.
Its reviews established a pattern that would often be repeated in assessments of Turpin's work: praise for his comic voice, mild criticism of his somewhat dated style and subject matter.
Andrew Leslie found that, "The story reaches anticlimax too quickly but, as compensation, it is full of felicities of observations, often funny, always interesting, never patronising.
'"[12] Beatrice and Bertha, which Turpin characterized as a "novel-memoir" and formed part of his Memoirs series, and Ladies: An Episode of Revolution appeared in 1966.
"[14] Claire Tomalin judged that "With fewer ponderous generalisations and more laughter this would have been an even better book: as it is, it deserves a place in the rich chronicles of the English petty bourgeoisie of our century.
Victoria Glendinning wrote of the two books, "Sexual passion is the theme, but so overlaid is it by conventions, reasonable behavior, ironing-boards and cups of tea, that violence and crudeness when they do surface have twice their normal impact."
Reviewer Dick McLinden found the story's outcome predictable but wrote that Turpin "has such an engaging way of dealing with the obvious that one simply enjoys being a bystander to this strange marital arrangement.
As Ackland, who went on to adopt the name Valentine and become the life-long companion of the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, later wrote, "I rang up Richard and asked him to meet me for lunch.
I won’t if it is put off for a day.’" Ackland was already finding herself attracted to women and the marriage was further complicated by her pain in attempting intercourse and his own homosexual tendencies.