With his wife Louise, affectionately known as 'Steve' in reference to her journalistic pen name 'Steve Trent', he solves whodunnit crimes through subtle, humorously articulated deduction.
While he possessed no formal training as a detective, his background in constructing crime plots for his novels enabled him to apply deductive reasoning to solve cases whose solution had eluded Scotland Yard.
Over the course of each case, Temple eschewed formal interviews or other police techniques, in favour of casual conversations with suspects and witnesses.
Durbridge was still at college when he approached Webster, who was then with the BBC Midland Region, with his proposal for a mystery series about a gentleman detective.
However, some of the early radio serials do still exist, including Paul Temple Intervenes from 1942, featuring the first appearance in the series by Westbury, in a supporting role.
Because no recordings survive for many of the early serials, in 2006 BBC Radio 4 began recreating them, in as authentic a manner as possible: as mono productions, employing vintage microphones and sound effects, and using the original scripts.
The final such production to date was Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, aired in 2013 (the longest of all the serials, running to ten episodes).
Francis Durbridge licensed the television rights in his characters to the BBC, who between 1969 and 1971 produced a drama series entitled Paul Temple.
This made it practicable, in terms of the show's budget, to film location scenes for the series overseas (i.e. in Munich and other cities in West Germany).
Only 16 of the 52 episodes currently exist in the BBC's television archive with their original English soundtrack, and only 11 of these are in colour (for the other five, only black and white telerecordings survive).
Many of the BBC Paul Temple radio serials were novelised between 1938 and 1989 by Francis Durbridge working with collaborators from his original scripts.
Between 19 November 1951 and 1 May 1971, whilst the character was at the height of his popularity on radio and television, Paul Temple was adapted as a daily newspaper strip in the London Evening News.
[22] Selected editions from the strips drawn by John McNamara were reprinted by an obscure South London magazine publisher, Micron, in a short lived series in 1964.
[23] At no stage did the strip feature recognisable portraits of the then-current stars of the radio series, Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury.
[24] All the surviving English-language radio episodes, including the 1940 Canadian remake of Send for Paul Temple, have been released on CD by the BBC.
The 11 surviving colour episodes held in the BBC archives (featuring Francis Matthews and Ros Drinkwater) from the BBC-TV version of "Paul Temple" were released on DVD on 6 July 2009 by Acorn Media UK.
They were performed by actors of national renown, including Luxembourg-born René Deltgen (who played the title role in 11 of the 12 series), Gustav Knuth, Friedrich W Bauschulte, Pinkas Braun, Heinz Schimmelpfennig, Siegfried Wischnewski, Wolfgang Wahl, Günther Ungeheuer and Paul Klinger amongst others.
Seven Italian-language Paul Temple serials were produced by RAI between 1953 and 1977, each with a different voice actor in the title role: Both 1961 productions are presumed lost.
The programme was directed and produced by Reuven Morgan starring Bezalel Levi as Paul Temple and Nili Keynan as his wife Steve.