Feminists who are Lord Peter fans......

[BertrandRussell]

I just noticed this reference to domestic violence in Busman’s Honeymoon.
“"O-o-oh! I do hope he won't be violent."

"Violent?" said Harriet, half amused and half angry. "Oh, I shouldn't think so."

But alarm is infectious...and much-tried men have been known to vent their exasperation upon their[Pg 330] servants. The two women clung together, waiting for the explosion.

"Well," said the distant voice, "all I can say is, Bunter, don't let it happen again.... All right.... Good God, man, you needn't tell me that ...of course you didn't.... We'd better go and view the bodies."

The sounds died away, and the women breathed more freely. The dreadful menace of male violence lifted its shadow from the house”

Aren’t those last two sentences chilling?

@drspouse is was mispronounced on audible? 😳😳😳

Mind, when I lived in Oxford I was often forced to keep a very straight face when tourists mispronounced Magdalen. I tried to be very polite and not correct them obviously 🙈

@bettys I have just started Have His Carcase. I too think the beret is positively splendid! And the nap sack . I previously spotted some replica nap sacks on not on the high street and I am coveting a proper canvas and leather job.

InvisibleUnicorn I agree about the knapsack, it also seems to hold an awful lot of items! I have been looking online for a knitting pattern but no luck so far. In episode 2 Harriet wears a rather splendid zigzag top.

Am also re-reading Murder Must Advertise for the umpteenth time & hugely enjoying it while thinking how it is remarkably modern in some ways in outlook. Just got to the bit where he goes out to dinner with the only woman who wasn't pining on his account.

Hang on.

Strong Poison is on YouTube too?

Looking at screenshots I'm convinced the hall scenes are Corpus Christi Oxford.

Can't work out how to get images in here but if you look carefully at the first scene in GN when it pans across it has a tiled floor, a fireplace on the right hand side, and little carved things coming down either side of the portrait behind the high table. Those all match Corpus but not Sidney. And Sidney has a door behind the high table on the right which I can't see in the video.

I could see how a person could mispronounce Balliol but not someone who's paid to be an audiobook reader...

I had no idea all these were on YouTube, I can see some very happy hours ahead of me

I really love The Nine Tailors read by Ian Carmichael, I could listen to him reading out the bell changes for hours.

Has nobody mentioned Harriet promising to obey?
I don't care if they did it to annoy Helen and make a point about how liberated they were, I still don't like it.

Except that, they have a whole argument about it, and he says something along the lines that he would consider it an impertinance to order her to do anything, and she says no, you’d give orders quick smart if there was something falling from above or the house was on fire.

Also, I think Ian Carmichael is a terrific reader, but he was much too old for the part when he was acting in it. Edward Petherbridge all the way on screen. Harriet Walter is one of my all time favourite actors - such presence!

ah, this thread! I am in total agreement about the punt scene. And have always been looking for a man who would surreptitiously complete my half-finished sonnet, making it a better poem.

They can have the harmony if they leave us the counterpoint.

The French opera singer in Peter's past is a bit dodgy though. All very well singing saucy songs in the French language but what happened to her when he discarded her, eh?

Also on busman's honeymoon - I agree we have to take some of its broader parts as being suited to the stage. The denouement itself, for example, is entirely a visual special effect. All a bit Phantom of the Opera.

Apparently he had never given any of his lovers cause for complaint, according to his possibly biased uncle in the afterword.

I didn’t realise Busman’s Honeymoon was originally written for the stage. I can’t get my head round how the diary entries or epistolary bits (which I like best of the whole book) would have worked in that format.

This thread is a much needed tonic.

Her attitudes to Jewish people were ahead of their time too. Some characters (usually unsympathetic ones) mention unpleasant stereotypes which would have been normal at the time - references to "yellow financiers" for example (grim). But she writes Jewish characters far more sympathetically than most of her contemporaries. The Levy family in Whose Body are portrayed as fully rounded, sympathetic figures and there are favourable references in several books to inter-faith marriage - interesting, given that DLS was such a devout Christian.

I have loads I want to say, but DH has just made it home from work 🙄

So in the meantime, I shall just put my surprise at how large the flat iron rock is portrayed? I had in my head from the descriptions a much smaller rock, but it's like a small mountain 😏

I will have to re read.

I was also most disappointed with a ping pong scene rather than a picnic and washing up in the stream.

@catkind you have DH's utter respect as as soon as I mentioned the door, he agreed.

He is also in awe of me finding a group of similarly obsessed individuals and has happily settled down to watching the end of Have His Carcass in bed on the iPad.

Anyone else find the ending of Gaudy Night Petherbridge/Walter disappointing and rushed? The climax of their relationship after all that and you're, kind of, aaaaaahhhhhhh! Letdown!

Also, I know they had to make cuts but I think it's a real shame they left out the character of St George. He was like a mini Peter and a bit more naughty or is it just me?

Btw Anyone else have a fondness for Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club?

I've never watched any of tv adaptations. They sounds like a delectable way of entertaining myself when the dreaded insomnia hits. Where should I start, or doesn't it matter when one already knows the books?

Lol InvisibleUnicorn, wish my DH would properly appreciate Sayers. I liked seeing the Flat Iron Rock on screen as I'd never been able to picture it properly in my head. What I still can't picture is how the conspirators got the ring into the rock.

On the whole I loved the Petherbridge adaptations - he's so much more true to the character than Carmichael, who really should have resisted the temptation to do them when he was clearly too old for the part. You would never in a million years buy the image of Carmichael diving from a height into a fountain as Wimsey does in "Murder Must Advertise".

However, for me Gaudy Night was the one disappointment of the Petherbridge series - not for the performances, but because they really didn't allow enough time for it. One more episode to fill in the gaping gaps left from the original book could have made all the difference.

Gnu Gaudy Night was rushed and I agree with tobee that the ending was particularly disappointing. I missed the nephew too and also Reggie Pomfret, who is quite important in getting Harriet to see that Peter's devotion might be genuine. I would have loved to see the harpsichord episode onscreen.

Edward Petherbridge was really a bit too old too but I love him - ever since I saw him play Newman Noggs and Vershinin at the RSC - and he's so good it doesn't matter too much. Except that, if he'd been younger, they might have allowed him to do the beach ride in HHC - which is another significant episode in the relationship.

Harriet Walter is Harriet Vane for me. I was totally star-struck when I met her once - like meeting the real thing

I enjoyed Dorothy Sayers when younger but find her a tiresome read now because of the combination of common or garden and intellectual snobbery. However I probably learned to use the term tiresome from authors of her era. My last holiday read was South Riding, which I found alternately gripping and annoying. Later this week I'm going away with the first three books of A Dance to the Music of Time, it will be interesting to see how that stands up, it's more than 40 years since I read it and I'm hoping for interesting parallels with the world today. Sorry for rambling derail.

Meant to say that in South Riding (Winifred Holtby) there is a very detailed description of a woman with what at first reading looks like bipolar illness but is probably PMDD/PND. I wondered if it was drawn from life. The character's end is bleak, a saddening read.