Dorothy L Sayers

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@missclimpson and anyone else. These preposterous stories seem to be my main lockdown reading. What is it about Dorothy L? Which books do you like best? I started with Gaudy Night as it sent me to sleep nicely , but didn't really enjoy it till quite a long way in. Odd book.

Gaudy Night is my favourite, closely followed by Death Must Advertise. There is a lot of conversation in Gaudy Night, but that’s one of the reasons I love it so. It’s quite a serious book at heart, with discussions about how much women owe to the world, versus what they can claim for themselves. And the whole chess set part is so romantic without being sentimental.

Death Must Advertise has such a feverish, over-excited tone, it gives an astonishing sense of the period. I love it for being a bit over-excited, Grady with freedom and being young and clever. It’s fun, but with a dark heart.

@DancelikeEmmaGoldman I absolutely agree with you! Those are my favourites too. I love Gaudy Night and Harriet is a great character. Although it’s set in the 1930s the women’s college depicted is really not that different from the one I attended in the 1970s ( without the deranged poison pen letters). Also Murder Must Advertise shows office life very accurately ( Sayers herself worked in an advertising agency)plus the decadent parties of the late 1920s complete with drugs.

My favourite is The Nine Tailors (even though I am not in it 😀). I do like Strong Poison with the clicky thing in my bloomers.
We have all the DVDs, both Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge. I am always unpopular on DLS threads because (whisper it softly) I am not a Harriet Walter fan.

Yes, I love Nine Tailors too, though I believe it’s actually impossible for someone to die that way! I do sometimes feel with Lord Peter that DLS was so much in love with her creation that she couldn’t allow him to have any faults.

Yes I think that is right and not unconnected with her intense relationship with religion.

And the unsatisfactory nature of the real men in her life.

Murder Must Advertise is my absolute favourite, though Strong Poison and Busmans Honeymoon are close runners

DancelikeEmmaGoldman I so agree with you. I go back to Gaudy Night again and again for those discussions on women's metiers, and on the dynamics of an equal relationship.

I've also realised that one of my politically active aunts was at Oxford in the 1920s (she wasn't British, so that was a bit unexpected). It's very illuminating to see the sort of environment she might have experienced.

In fact I often find myself silently quoting bits.

I saw a comment (on MN Feminism boards, no less) suggesting that the reason some women wanted to work in professional jobs was that child-rearing had low status: therefore the "fix" was to raise the status of child-rearing, instead of solving the problem of childcare.

And I wanted to howl, "But I dare say I should scrub floors very badly, and I write books rather well."

(Would that I did write books well. But the point stands.)

I think I would put Clouds of Witness ahead of Busman’s Honeymoon. I love the beginning of BH about the wedding and when they finally get to go to bed together. ( Obviously Lord P is very good in bed). But I do find his vapourings at the end over the hanging a bit tedious. I know it’s meant to arise out of his wartime trauma, but if he hates it so much why be a detective? Or why not campaign against capital punishment? Or something.

I love the Wimsey books too. I think, apart from Gaudy Night, my favourite is probably The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club and the references to life for veterans dealing with post-war trauma. I’ve been thinking about rereading them, and recently picked up Mo Moulton’s book about Sayers and her Oxford circle Mutual Admiration Society to get me in the mood. Also have the Ian Carmichael DVDs (not as keen on Petherbridge) although the episodes with Carmichael in a Pierrot costume are a bit unfortunate…Also really enjoyed the Carmichael audiobooks. I managed to track down the Harriet Walter versions to watch online but I thought that the adaptation of Gaudy Night was a bit lacklustre compared to the novel. If anyone wants to try the TV versions btw then just do a search on YouTube for Dorothy L. Sayers. Most are available as well as some audio versions.

All these treats waiting for me! I did read 5 Red Herrings a few years ago when visiting the place where it's set, but didn't feel it as I would now. I'm reading on Kindle as my eyes aren't great, but should be able to read books again if and when the opticians come back to active life. I'll find the Mutual Admiration Society too. Any other recommended biographies?

Gaudy Night tops them all for me, too. I agree it’s a serious book, working out contemporary issues about sex and marriage and women’s intellectual work. Murder Must Advertise is also great, but I like best the ones with most Harriet in them, so I also have a soft spot for the preposterous Have His Carcase with its mad Ruritarian backstory and huge chunk given up to blow by blow accounts of code breaking.

Busman’s Honeymoon I have mixed feelings about. I know it started off as a play, but it leaps about madly from somewhat overwritten sexual awakening/honeymooners’ stuff to jolly japes with Bunter and the comedy villagers, and then Peter cracking up when the murderer is hanged.

Lots of DLS books are available for free to download on fadedpage.com incidentally.

I did Religio Medici for English A level about 55 years ago but have forgotten all about it. I was delighted to find this on Abebooks and thought you and Sir Thomas might like it too.

@Vellum , I've just finished Have His Carcase , which is why I used the word preposterous!
Thank you so much for the link to fadedpage.com. I'm off there right now.

I read the Barbara Reynolds biography Dorothy L Sayers: Her Life and Soul which was cheap on Kindle iirc. It is a while ok but I think I enjoyed it but skipped over some of the lengthy religious bits.
I agree about Busman's Honeymoon. It makes me feel uncomfortable especially the way they patronise Miss Twitterton. I quite like the DLS short story which is based at Tallboys in the war, with the three boys in it (why did Jill Paton Walsh change the names round?)

Not a biography, but her 1947 essay The Lost Tools of Learning, which is available as a pdf.

It's a long time since I last read it properly, in full - but this rather leaps out:

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

Wonderful to be at the start of DLS immersion! I'm an unrepentant Busman's Honeymoon fan. But Gaudy Night is a touchstone, of course.

I have just worked my way through DLS's novels for the first time - it was the perfect lockdown escape reading!
I couldn't finish Five Red Herrings though, I found the accent writing was just too annoying.
I think Gaudy Night was my favourite but not the one I'd recommend to someone coming to DLS for the first time. For that, I think maybe Have His Carcase.

One of the things I like about Murder Must Advertise is the way that DLS completely nails office life, which honestly hasn’t changed that much in the 90 years since she wrote it: the gossip, the backbiting, the moaning about your manager. Also the cricket match at the end. ‘ You have a late cut that is exceedingly characteristic ‘. Love it.

Ooh ohh a DLS thread! Always good on Mumsnet!

I love Have His Carcase - it's a fun mystery and I keep feeling the need for a brisk walking holiday after reading it; in tweed and a cloche hat.

And The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club I enjoy reading too! Very strong sense of the era.

Mixed about Gaudy Night. Ultimately it goes on too long. But I love the electricity in the scene in the punt!!

Ooh and I have a soft spot for St-George. Shame they left him out of the Petherbridge version.

I've moved on to Ngaio Marsh to fill the DLS gap but would love other recommendations. I don't fancy anything more recent unless the current crisis has abated. I was a bit meh about Murder at the Bar, loved A Surfeit of Lampreys (though the plot resolution was a bit damp) and now I'm on The Nursing Home Murder.

St George is a total sexpot. Or maybe it’s just the absence of monocle?

Yes, I love Harriet’s walking holiday at the start of Have His Carcase too. Though I confess every time I read it I wonder about that passage at the beginning which praises Harriet for how sensibly little she’s carrying in her rucksack — how she’s ‘agreeably’ tanned and doesn’t need skin cream or midge repellent, which are viewed as unnecessary fuss, is wearing a light sweater and skirt, and is carrying (besides a camera, her lunch and Tristram Shandy) only a ‘change of linen’ (meaning presumably underwear?) and extra footwear. Given that on that day alone, she’s planning to walk 16 miles in hot summer weather, it seems a rather sweaty prospect if she’s really walking for weeks in one outfit...?

@BeKindStayHome have you tried Margery Allingham? She wrote from the 20's through to the 60's. The first few are very slight stories but by the war time books she had really found her style.

DLS replacements?

Josephine Tey (The Franchise Affair is stupendous.)

Margery Allingham (Millions of books. Intelligent, if a little lacking in whatever gives a book heart.)

Outside the detective sphere

Marghanita Laski (Little Boy Lost in particular)

Sylvia Townsend Warner (The Corner That Held Them seems groundbreaking in its form.)

Caroline Blackwood (Read Great Granny Webster.)

Or, in fact, the majority of the Persephone Books catalogue.

And The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, a wonderful, acerbic memoir disguised as a cookbook.