Dorothy L Sayers

[Footle]

@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.

Has anyone read A Town called Alice?

Has anyone else read Huckleberry Finn?

Gosh, you make me feel old! Is it really not considered normal, now, to have read such classic works of literature by the time one reaches adulthood? (At least if you've grown up using the language in which they were written.)

I'm afraid I would consider any excision of currently offensive material from past work to be a brutal attack on knowledge. I gather this is happening to school set-texts and some children's fiction? Personally I prefer to know my enemy ...

I was talking about Gaudy Night to a friend recently - that bit where Miss de Vine & Harriet are talking about principles. “However painful it is, there’s always something you have to deal with sincerely, if there’s any root to one’s mind at all.”

That resonates quite a lot these days.

I Am old perdita, and it would be lovely if I was wrong, but I think very few people have read those books.
I was being frivolous about excising the end of HF. You are right.

Gaudy Night. The chase from the classroom? Then the rescue from the river. Loved those bits. Busman's Honeymoon was such a letdown after this.

@MaMaLa321 Where is the antisemitism in The Franchise Affair ? I can’t recall any, though admittedly it’s a while since I last read it. I would find it a bit surprising given that it was written in 1948.

The protagonist is a country solicitor, and another character is (to me, anyway) another, Jewish, solicitor. Who wouldn't be appropriate to deal with the heroine's case. I am happy to be corrected, but it's fairly obvious to me.

Ah, I think he’s called Ben something? He’s a rather sympathetic character though I think.I seem to remember that Marion makes a remark about him being ‘ a horrible man with striped suits’ or similar. I think I would have taken that as snobbish rather than antisemitic. There’s undoubtedly a considerable vein of snobbery in the book. Maybe it was that which Sarah Waters objected to.

I mean, the working class characters in TFA are all either venal or stupid or both, apart from the salt of the earth ex-army types who run the garage. (See also Padgett in Gaudy Night.) Mind you, Tey does also skewer what she regards as the do-gooding middle classes in the person of the bishop who writes to the newspapers.

Top tip for D L Sayers fans - search for Wimsey audiobooks on YouTube.

MaMaLa321 yes the end of Huckleberry Finn is awful, so I just stop before that bit when I re-read!

I do wish I could like audiobooks. But I can't. I like a relationship with the arrangement of words on a page, being able to assess the craft inherent in each tiny decision the writer (plus editor) made while getting from beginning to end. And being able to flick back and exclaim "Ah, I see ..."

(Dismayed to find that lockdown has turned me into such a contrarian ...)

I very rarely read a book de novo on audiobook, but enjoy listening to books I know well when walking or driving. Modern books where the author has some input to the audio version can give you more insight as to the authors intent in a phrase.

A Town like Alice, much as it is a classic, and at times a beautifully written book, does imo, have a lot of racism and I have to say I often finish reading when she arrives in Oz.

Contrarian, @PerditaProvokesEnmity? We're allowed our opinions, dammit.

Do any of you find your men reading and enjoying (not just because of lockdown) any of 'your' books? My DH enjoys Georgette Heyer Regency books. He appreciates the style of writing and the believability of the world that is created on the page.
We are both DLS and Marge Allingham fans. DLS on Radio4extra were very good. They treated Inspector Parker well and old Meubles who wouldn't have a telephone in his office in 1919/20!

Does anyone remember the Tea House Detective, a learned old man and a young woman journalist solving crimes early 20 Century? help Please. Author? Were they written contemporary or modern recreations?
You will know.

Does anyone remember the Tea House Detective, a learned old man and a young woman journalist solving crimes early 20 Century?

The Old Man in the Corner & Miss Polly Burton?
I remembered them being mentioned in one of Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence books & had a quick Google. They were by Baroness Orczy, who wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605140/the-case-of-miss-elliott-the-teahouse-detective-by-baroness-orczy/

Emma Orczy? (Possibly better known as the author of the Scarlet Pimpernel novels.) Here's the Wikipedia entry on her

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Orczy

And this is the entry for The Old Man in the Corner:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_in_the_Corner

I remember the Scarlet Pimpernel on TV! - but for some forgotten reason (possibly youthful revolutionary spirit) never took to the novels. The Old Man in the Corner does seem familiar, though I don't remember having read any.

The Scarlet Pimpernel was famously historical fiction but the Old Man series seems to have been contemporary - at least the one featuring the London Underground! But I have no secure knowledge to impart.

(Crossed! Apologies - I started my post then got up to grind some coffee and came back to it while the coffee was filtering.)

No problem Perdita

@EmpressLangClegInChair & @PerditaProvokesEnmity Thank you both just the ones I was looking for.
It was on R4Ex as The Teahouse Detective, Bernard Hepton was the Old Man, he was lovely. Kind but insisting to Polly.

Thought this brought up some interesting points re: Sayers’s Jewish characters:

momentmag.com/curious-case-dorothy-l-sayers-jew-wasnt/

And Pollyhemlock don’t know if you saw this, but if not might be of interest re: your thoughts on Tey and likelihood of antisemitism in Britain in the late 40s and beyond:

www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/24/the-british-jews-who-fought-postwar-fascism-on-londons-streets

@YoungHillKang Yes, that’s very interesting. I certainly wouldn’t imply that there was no antisemitism in Britain after the war. Clearly there was. I just don’t think Tey would have expressed it. Some of the thriller writers of the 20s and 30s, and indeed other writers ( I’m looking at you, GK Chesterton), expressed quite open antisemitic views in their works. This would have been a lot less common post war. Obviously those views were still around though. They are still around today, sadly.

I'm surprised that anyone is surprised at antisemitism in Britain in the late 1940s. Or in any decade really.

Thank you again for the recommendation of Shedunnit - I'm binge listening every chance I get and loving it. Found a stack of Gladys Mitchells second hand that are winging their way to me now, so summer reading is sorted.

One thing that really stuck with me reading Gaudy Night was the American woman who is a fervent eugenics enthusiast and holds forth on the subject with absolutely no-one saying anything against it. I think passages like that are so enlightening and really show how fascism got a foot-hold - the ideas were everywhere and people were too polite, meek or in agreement in parts to oppose them. The whole passage makes Harriet Vane a less agreeable character to us modern readers, and that's good because it also makes her more human. One of the flaws with modern retro novels is that they have to imbue their heros and heroines with modern sensibilities so they end up too perfect. No person in history was ever perfect, everyone is "problematic".

Oh I'm pretty sure the prose purses its lips about the American eugenicist.

As Austen would have done, Sayers sets her up as an object of faint ridicule without spelling out the precise objections.

Although I agree that Harriet herself doesn't take the woman on directly – as you say, too polite.

Yes we do get the impression that the American isn’t quite behaving properly, but there is certainly no taking a stand for human rights going on ;)