Dorothy Sayers' Whimsey novels - do you know the (1980s) TV adaptations?

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I wasn't sure where to put this thread, but it feels as if it'd be more at home here that the TV threads. I love Dorothy Sayers. MN introduced me to her. I wish they'd do another adaptation, but the 1980s ones are surprisingly good.

The wonderful sconerhymeswithgone showed me the existence of these on youtube. (The link is to Gaudy Night, because that's what I'm watching, but there are lots of earlier ones).

What do you think? I liked the casting, but I have quibbles. And the ending to Gaudy Night is a travesty, right?

Yeeesss, I think Sayers rather overdid that actually (to make Peter look good despite the fact he was acting like an entitled knob with his proposal)

Oh, but haven't we all gone out with wankers at that age?

It's what gives me hope, Gaudy Night. Yes, when I was 22 I was with a total wanker, but if I hang around enough Oxford colleges before I'm 32 ...

Anyway, I've just found that some of them are free on Gutenberg! www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-busman/sayers-busman-00-h.html

Is his proposal entitled?

I am really struck, actually, by how much people did get married based on not very much. Also, how much do we think he's serious?

Yes, absolutely, and he admits it himself in GN!

"at the moment when I should have been thinking only of you and your circumstances, I blundered in, trying to grab at what I wanted for myself"

(or...words to that general effect)

I do find his proposal a bit entitled, and his frequent repetitions of it even more so. But he does take her seriously as a human being, even so.

stealth When I first got my kindle, I bought only books that I had already read and had copies of so that I would always have my favorites with me. So I say do it.

I've been wondering the same thing stealthsquiggle - I started buying new paperback editions last year to replace my originals, which I bought between 1971 and 1974 and which are starting to fall apart. Now I've got a Kindle, I want them on that! So far the only Kindle one I have is Unnatural Death, though I also have The Late Scholar, which is the latest (slightly disappointing) Jill Paton Walsh one.

This thread is where all the totally reasonable posters are

I like TLS more than TAE - I think by TLS she's given up trying to 'mimic' Sayers (which she misses) and has somewhat similar characters speaking with the voices she has given them.

Mmm. I'm not sure that's entitled, though, yonic.

It's problematic, but I think the problem isn't precisely entitlement, but rather that he doesn't realize how much she's having to get over what happened previously, and he naively thinks that if he's a decent bloke, it will be fine.

I agree that attitude can (and goodness knows, we notice on MN, often does!) shade over into male entitlement, but the point is that when he realizes it's wrong for her, he acknowledges he got it wrong.

mmm, but it takes him six years to realise!

I think, regardless of her feelings for Boyes, waltzing up to someone to whom you are in a position of power (her life may depend on his exertions) and proposing to them is entitlement.

Plus, although he has been watching her in court, she has been unaware of him.

And yes, he says he'd investigate it either way, but it's not exactly fair, is it?!

Yes, I have to say I did enjoy reading it, it was just afterwards that I felt a sense of disappointment - I think because JPW has got quite a long way away from DLS by this time. Thrones, Dominations was a completion of Sayers' unfinished work, and A Presumption of Death took a lot from the Wimsey Papers, but the Attenbury Emeralds and the Late Scholar are more JPW than DLS. I probably need to read them all again; I always find it difficult to judge a book on first reading, because I am too keen to find out what happens to pay proper attention to the style.

I'm so glad to have found this thread. Would never have known that this was being shown but have set the recorder dooda.

Drama channel is currently in my very good books: Miss Marple with Joan Hickson (so I can mock the latest ITV versions); the Agatha Christie hour and now this.

Bliss.

Yes, but it was the 1930s!

I don't see that, Jeanne. I mean, he's fallen in love with her at first sight - Ok, fine - but he hasn't made any effort to ascertain if she's fallen in love back or to even give the impression that might matter.

I need to re-read Strong Poison.

I suspect I'm influenced by the TV version, since I have just watched it, where it comes across as if it's just a speculative chat-up line, then he thinks she's talking to him because she's half-interested.

You will be right, though.

(And incidentally, reading Busman's Honeymoon on the link I just posted, I am noticing Bunter's mother is 87 in Gaudy Night, so we are quite right that he is far too young in the TV versions - he looks much younger than EP, and even if he were only 40 or so, it seems unlikely his mum had him at 47, in those days.)

Clouds of Witness is currently only 92p on Kindle! (the rest are £4-5)

I now also have Clouds of Witness on mine...

"You will be right, though"

Have I said lately how much I admire your judgement?

Irene, sorry, missed your earlier post.

Nine Tailors is a split book, first there's the car crash (31 Dec), which the timeline puts at after Wimsey spent the Xmas at Denver where everyone told him HV did it. Then there was the discovery in April and the recall of Wimsey. Then later in the year there was the flood and the ultimate resolution of the problem.

It was referenced in Gaudy Night as a story Wimsey had told Harriet at one difficult dinner, time unspecified I think, when he kept talking to prevent a row.

I'm not sure this is exactly the timeline in my Kindle book but it does show the SP/NT/5RH interleaving.

SPOILERS!

plaza.ufl.edu/sibenny/project1/timeline.html

I don't really belong here as I can't stand LPW , although I have read all the LPW books, more than once. I like Harriet and I like the stories (especially Murder Must Advertise), it's just the tiresome LPW I struggle with. I much prefer her other detective, Montague Egg, who features in various short stories. He's a chirpy little travelling salesman in the wine and spirits trade who solves whodunnits while on his rounds.

Anyway, I just popped in to say that the flowers were a hangover from the days when nobody knew about bacteria and viruses and it was widely believed that illness might be a result of bad smells (miasma) of which there were many in London, before we had decent sanitation. People carried flowers to ward off the smell - so in Ring a ring a roses, the pocketful of posies was medicinal, in the hope that it would ward off the plague. It's suggested on the internet (which we all know is always right ) that judges still sometimes have a posy on the bench at the Old Bailey.

There's a Margery Allingham book called Flowers for the Judge which mentions this too. Incidentally, I much prefer Margery Allingham, and for that matter Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie, to DLS.

Thanks, Mimsy!

Montagu Egg doesn't drive you mad with his salesman's handbook stuff?