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84-545: The Five Red Herrings (also The 5 Red Herrings ) is a 1931 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers , her sixth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey . In the United States it was published in the same year under the title Suspicious Characters . The novel is set in Galloway , a part of Scotland popular with artists and recreational fishermen . Sandy Campbell is a talented painter, but also a notoriously quarrelsome drunkard. When he

168-642: A Gilchrist Scholarship , which she was awarded in March 1912. Among the purposes of these scholarships was to sponsor women to study at university colleges. Sayers's scholarship, worth £50 a year for three years, enabled her to study modern languages at Somerville College, Oxford . After her experiences with the religious regime at Godolphin, Sayers chose Somerville, a non-denominational college, instead of an Anglican college. The all-women college of Somerville suited well, according to Kenney, because of its practice of cultivating its students to take prominent roles in

252-491: A "masterpiece" was a work of a very high standard produced to obtain membership of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts. The form masterstik is recorded in English or Scots in a set of Aberdeen guild regulations dated to 1579, whereas masterpiece is first found in 1605, already outside a guild context, in a Ben Jonson play. Masterprize was another early variant in English. In English,

336-515: A London fringe theatre in April 1940. Notices were friendly— The Times said that Sayers poked some agreeable fun at a number of conventions, sentimental, literary, and theatrical and The Stage called the play "very amusing and provocative" —but at that stage of the war there was no demand for another light comedy in the West End, and there was no transfer. The task that preoccupied Sayers from

420-609: A book, The Floating Admiral . She edited a second collection of Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror , and as a solo effort wrote The Five Red Herrings , published in the US as Suspicious Characters . Harriet Vane does not appear in that novel, but is the central character in the next Wimsey book, Have His Carcase , published in 1932. Wimsey solves the murder but is no more successful in winning Harriet's love than he had been in Strong Poison . Have His Carcase

504-418: A car crash, resembles that in which Sayers grew up. With much of the storyline featuring bell-ringing, she spent considerable time researching campanology which gave her considerable trouble, and there were technical errors in her description of the practice. The book gained enthusiastic notices. In The News Chronicle , Charles Williams wrote that it was "not merely admirable; it is adorable. ... It

588-441: A contrast of two "cardboard" worlds, equally fictitious—the world of advertising and the world of the post-war " Bright Young People ". (It was not very successful, because I knew and cared much more about advertising than about Bright Youth, but that is by the way.) Kenney describes the book as "flawed but brilliant". In terms of its literary status in relation to more manifestly serious fiction of Sayers's day, Kenney ranks it below

672-503: A divorcé, Captain Oswald Arthur (known as "Mac") Fleming, a well-known journalist. Her son was given the latter's surname but was not brought to live with Sayers and her husband. The marriage, happy at first, grew more difficult as Fleming's health declined, but the couple stayed together until his death of a stroke in 1950, when he was 68. The Wimsey novels continued with Unnatural Death in 1927 and The Unpleasantness at

756-673: A founder member of the Detection Club . This grew from informal dinners arranged by Anthony Berkeley for writers of detective fiction "for the enjoyment of each other's company and for a little shop talk ". The dinners proved such a success that the participants agreed to form themselves into a club, under the presidency of G. K. Chesterton , whom Sayers admired. She was one of the club's most enthusiastic members; she devised its elaborate initiation ritual in which new members swore to write without relying on "Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery, Coincidence or

840-529: A job as a copywriter at S. H. Benson , then Britain's largest advertising agency. Although she had reservations about the misleading nature of advertising, she became a skilled practitioner, and remained with the firm until the end of 1929. She originated successful campaigns for products including Guinness stout and Colman's mustard. She is sometimes credited with coining the slogan "My Goodness, My Guinness", but it dates from 1935, more than five years after she left Benson's. She was, though, responsible for

924-415: A lack of faith, declining morality, dishonesty, exploitation, disharmony and other similar problems, and believed that Dante shared the same view of his own. Once she began to read, she found herself unable to stop: I bolted my meals, neglected my sleep, work and correspondence, drove my friends crazy, and paid only a distracted attention to the doodle-bugs which happened to be infesting the neighbourhood at

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1008-589: A living she taught modern languages at Hull High School for Girls . Teaching did not greatly appeal to her, and in 1917 she secured a post with the publisher and bookseller Basil Blackwell in Oxford. Returning to the city suited her well. A younger contemporary, Doreen Wallace , later described her in these years: I have never known anyone so brimful of the energy of a well-stocked mind: even at 24, when I knew her first, she knew an enormous amount about all sorts of subjects unconnected with Old French literature, which

1092-564: A man, Bill White, by whom she had a son in 1924. The novelist A. N. Wilson describes White as "motorcycling rough trade ". That liaison was short-lived—White turned out to be married—and the son, whom Sayers named John Anthony, was brought up by Ivy Shrimpton, who already had foster children in her care. Sayers concealed her son's parentage from him and from the world in general. She was known to him at first as "Cousin Dorothy", and she later posed as his adoptive mother. Only after her death were

1176-465: A masterpiece has continued in some modern academies of art, where the general term for such works is now reception piece . The Royal Academy in London uses the term " diploma work " and it has acquired a fine collection of diploma works received as a condition of membership. In modern use, a masterpiece is a creation in any area of the arts that has been given much critical praise, especially one that

1260-591: A masterpiece under their supervision at a "workhouse" in Goldsmiths' Hall . The workhouse had been set up as part of a tightening of standards after the company became concerned that the level of skill of goldsmithing was being diluted. The wardens of the company had complained in 1607 that the "true practise of the Art & Mystery of Goldsmithry is not only grown into great decays but also dispersed into many parts, so as now very few workmen are able to finish & perfect

1344-446: A novel in the manner of the 19th-century author Wilkie Collins , whose work she admired. She was working on a biography of Collins and adopted his first-person narrative technique in a story mostly told in exchanges of letters between the characters. Peter Wimsey does not appear in the book: Brabazon writes that Sayers "tasted the joys of freedom from Wimsey". Reviews were favourable, but gave only qualified praise. In The Graphic ,

1428-485: A pedestrian style, with little concern for anything except a puzzle, or rashly incorporated out of traditional fiction elements over which they had no command.  ... She mastered the art of giving a pleasant literary flavour to her stories while at the same time keeping within her own imaginative range. The first of Sayers's series of detective novels, Whose Body? , featured her amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. She had begun writing it before joining Benson's, and it

1512-406: A piece of plate singularly with all the garnishings & parts thereof without the help of many & several hands...". The same goldsmithing organization still requires the production of a masterpiece but it is no longer produced under supervision. In Nuremberg , Germany, between 1531 and 1572, apprentices who wished to become master goldsmith were required to produce columbine cups , dies for

1596-444: A steel seal, and gold rings set with precious stones before they could be admitted to the goldsmiths' guild. If they failed to be admitted, then they could continue to work for other goldsmiths but not as a master themselves. In some guilds, apprentices were not allowed to marry until they had obtained full membership. In its original meaning, the term was generally restricted to tangible objects, but in some cases, where guilds covered

1680-474: A student at Oxford". In her off-duty hours Sayers devoted herself to writing fiction. Detective novels were popular, and Sayers saw an opportunity to produce remunerative, accessible but well-written works in the genre. She mastered the mechanics of the craft by making a close analytical study of the best models. In a biographical sketch, a later crime novelist, J. I. M. Stewart , wrote: There were already many ingenious writers, but most of them either wrote in

1764-512: Is a great book". The Daily Herald said, "This is unquestionably Miss Sayers's best—until the next one". In 1935 Sayers published what she intended to be the last Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night , set in Harriet Vane's old Oxford college. There is attempted murder but Wimsey identifies the culprit in time to prevent further harm. At the end of the book Wimsey proposes to Harriet (in Latin) and

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1848-501: Is accepted (also in Latin). In Oxford in May, and in London in June, Sayers delivered a lecture entitled "Aristotle on Detective Fiction", humorously contending that in his Poetics , Aristotle shows that what he most wished for was a good detective story. The same year Sayers worked on a script for a film to be called The Silent Passenger . Although she was promised editorial control, it

1932-433: Is found dead in a stream, with a still-wet half-finished painting on the bank above, it is assumed that he fell in accidentally, fracturing his skull. Lord Peter Wimsey , who is in the region on a fishing holiday, suspects murder when he realises that something is missing from the scene which makes it likely that another artist painted the picture. Sayers includes a parenthetical note at this point: "Here Lord Peter Wimsey told

2016-405: Is something far other than a typical shocker. Her characters (especially her hero) are very much alive, and she has an admirable narrative style and great constructive skill". With this second novel, Sayers was being compared with the established crime novelist Agatha Christie as an author of detective stories that were also entertaining novels about human beings. In the same year Sayers married

2100-399: Is to be hoped that Miss Sayers will not let anything check the flow of her detective-story habit. Other reviewers wrote of a "well-written and pulsating mystery story, with an astonishing number of clues cleverly evolved, and totally unexpected conclusion", and a "pleasantly-going and smartly-written detective story"; another commented, "Miss Sayers is frankly out to thrill us; but her novel

2184-563: The Golden Age of Detective Fiction —Christie and Margery Allingham . Kenney comments that much of Sayers's thinking on the mystery novel and literature generally can be gleaned from her reviews, which reveal much about her attitude to art. She expected authors to write excellent prose and to avoid situations and plot devices already used by other writers. Sayers did not enjoy writing Murder Must Advertise and thought it an artistic failure: I undertook (not very successfully) to present

2268-577: The West End . Sayers, who kept in close contact with her son, John, sent him an account of the demanding rehearsals for the opening, a milieu new to her. The London premiere was at the Comedy Theatre in December 1936. Dennis Arundell and Veronica Turleigh played Wimsey and Harriet. It ran for more than a year, and while it was still running, Sayers rewrote it as a novel, published in 1937,

2352-424: The 1940s to the end of her life was her translation of Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy . She said she began it after reading the original Italian version in an air-raid shelter during bombing raids. She saw parallels between the writing and the state of the world during the war. I saw the whole lay-out of Hell as something actual and contemporary; something that one can see by looking into one's self, or into

2436-486: The Act of God" and "to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, Super-Criminals and Lunatics, and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science". The club charged no subscription fees, and to raise money for the acquisition of premises members contributed to collaborative works for broadcast or print. The first, organised by Sayers,

2520-562: The Bellona Club in 1928. In that year Sayers published Lord Peter Views the Body and edited and introduced an anthology of other writers' works, Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror , retitled for its American edition the following year as The Omnibus of Crime . In 1929, her last year as an employee of Benson's, Sayers and her husband moved from London to the small Essex town of Witham , which remained their home for

2604-512: The Bluntisham rectory. Kenney writes that the two formed a lifelong friendship through "a youthful sharing of books, imagination, and confidences". Otherwise, Kenney comments, Sayers, "like many future authors ... lived largely a life of books and stories". She could read by the age of four, and made full use of her father's extensive library as she grew up. Sayers was educated chiefly at home. Her father began teaching her Latin before she

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2688-453: The Body in 1928. Clouds of Witness , the second Wimsey novel, was published in 1926, and was well received. The Daily News commented: Not for a long time has there appeared a detective story so amusing, so lively, so witty and so agreeable. ... All Miss Sayers's characterisation is bright, natural and amusing; not a character in the book hangs fire, and there is a delightful absence of conventional clichés throughout ... It

2772-820: The Rev Robert Sayers, from County Tipperary , Ireland. At the time of Sayers's birth her father was headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School and chaplain of Christ Church , one of the colleges of the University of Oxford . Her mother, born in Shirley , Hampshire, was a daughter of a solicitor descended from landed gentry on the Isle of Wight . Sayers was proud of the Leigh connection and later considered calling herself "D. Leigh Sayers" in professional matters, before settling for "Dorothy L. Sayers"—insisting on

2856-491: The Second World War". Sayers insisted from the outset on realism, modern speech and a portrayal of Jesus. He had appeared as a character in numerous Passion plays in earlier centuries, but this was the first time an actor had played the part on radio; the press referred to "a radio Oberammergau ". Some conservative Christians expressed outrage. The Lord's Day Observance Society called it a "revolting imitation of

2940-534: The Sergeant what he was looking for and why, but as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page." A local doctor believes that the degree of rigor mortis suggests that Campbell died during the previous night. Whoever killed Campbell also executed the painting in Campbell's distinctive style, to contrive the appearance of an accident. Six talented artists in

3024-603: The Teeth of the Evidence —featuring Wimsey, Egg and others —and began a series of articles for The Spectator called The Wimsey Papers between 17 November 1939 and 26 January 1940, using Wimsey and his family and friends to convey Sayers's thoughts on life and politics in the early weeks of the Second World War . For the theatre Sayers wrote a comedy, Love All , a wry take on the eternal triangle . It opened in

3108-401: The absence of that tube that Wimsey had noted at the start. The police are sceptical, but Wimsey offers a reconstruction, and over the course of twenty-four hours demonstrates how the killer contrived the scene above the stream and also established a false alibi. Ferguson confesses, but states that Campbell's death happened accidentally during a fight, and was not murder. When the case is tried,

3192-537: The architects of the cathedral. It opened in June 1937, was well reviewed, and made a profit for the festival. The following year Sayers returned to a religious theme with He That Should Come , a radio Nativity play , broadcast by the BBC on Christmas Day, and in 1939 the Canterbury Festival staged another of her plays, The Devil to Pay . In the same year she published a collection of short stories, In

3276-427: The area have had recent public brawls with Campbell: Farren, Strachan, Gowan, Graham, Waters, and Ferguson. One of the six is the criminal, and five are red herrings . All the suspects behave suspiciously: some leave the district without explanation, others give obviously inaccurate statements or conceal facts. Wimsey investigates, with some assistance from his friend in London, Charles Parker . The task of identifying

3360-570: The arts and public life. She enjoyed her time there, and, she later said, acquired a scholarly method and habit of mind which served her throughout her life. She was a distinguished student, and, in Kenney's view, Sayers's novels and essays reflect her liberal education at Oxford. Among the lifelong friends she made at Somerville was Muriel St Clare Byrne , who later played an important part in Sayers's career and became her literary executor . Sayers

3444-482: The author's usual pleasant fantasies have retired into the background leaving a "pure-puzzle" book which is disappointing, dry, and dull. He acknowledged, however, that it has been appreciated immensely by puzzle fanatics who possess "the type of mind that goes on solving crossword puzzles for ever and ever". In A Catalogue of Crime (revised edn 1989), Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor called The Five Red Herrings "A work that grows on rereading and remains in

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3528-496: The controversy died down. The BBC's religious advisory committee, representing all the major Christian denominations, was united in support of the cycle, which came to be regarded as one of Sayers's greatest achievements. Sayers's other main work from the wartime years was her extended essay The Mind of the Maker , arguing that human creativity is the attribute that gives mankind its best chance of understanding, however imperfectly,

3612-430: The creators of intangible products, the same system was used. The best-known example today is Richard Wagner 's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), where much of the plot is concerned with the hero's composition and performance of a "masterpiece" song, to allow him to become a meistersinger in the (non-commercial) Nuremberg guild. This follows the surviving rulebook of the guild. The practice of producing

3696-504: The culprit is made more difficult because of the complexities of the local train timetables, the easy availability of bicycles, and the resultant opportunities for the murderer to evade notice. All six suspects are eventually traced and give statements in which they deny killing Campbell, but none are entirely satisfactory. The Procurator Fiscal , the Chief Constable and the investigating police officers meet with Wimsey to review

3780-612: The encouragement of her tutor, Mildred Pope , and in 1915 she was awarded first class honours in what was termed modern (in fact medieval) French in her final examinations. Despite her examination results, she was ineligible to be awarded a degree, as Oxford did not formally confer them on women. When the university changed its rules in 1920, Sayers was among the first to have her degree officially awarded. After graduating from Oxford, Sayers, who had begun writing verse in childhood, brought out two slim volumes of poetry, Op. I (1916) and Catholic Tales and Christian Songs (1918). To earn

3864-400: The evidence. The police put forward several theories, implicating all of the suspects either as killer or as accessory . Asked for his opinion, Wimsey finally reveals that the true killer was in fact Ferguson, the only one of the artists who while painting often kept spare tubes of paint in his pocket. Ferguson had absentmindedly pocketed a tube of white while creating the faked painting; it was

3948-605: The facts made explicit. Whose Body? , published in both Britain and the US, sold well enough for the London publishers, Fisher Unwin , to ask for a sequel. Before that was published Sayers featured Wimsey in a short story, "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will", published in Pearson's Magazine in July 1925, which, together with other short stories centred on Wimsey, came out in book form in Lord Peter Views

4032-482: The final three Wimsey novels, The Nine Tailors , Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon . Like Murder Must Advertise , The Nine Tailors draws on the author's personal experiences. Her portrait of the Rev Theodore Venables "tenderly evoked" her father, "unworldly, self-effacing [and] lovable", as Reynolds puts it. The rectory in which Wimsey and his manservant, Bunter , are offered refuge after

4116-590: The following two years Sayers published two Wimsey novels (neither featuring Harriet Vane)— Murder Must Advertise (1933) and The Nine Tailors (1934)—and a collection of short stories, Hangman's Holiday , featuring not only the patrician Wimsey but also a proletarian salesman and solver of mysteries, Montague Egg . She edited a third and final volume of Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror and began reviewing crime novels for The Sunday Times . Her reviews covered works by most of her important contemporaries, including her fellow "Queens of Crime" of

4200-430: The genre of detective fiction away from pure puzzles lacking characterisation or depth, and became recognised as one of the four "Queens of Crime" of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, along with Agatha Christie , Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh . She was a founder member of the Detection Club , and worked with many of its members in producing novels and radio serials collaboratively, such as

4284-463: The importance they attain through the events of the story. Sayers was disappointed with the book, and reproached herself for failing to do better with the material provided by her co-author. Her second book of the year was Strong Poison , in which she introduced the character Harriet Vane , whom Wimsey proves innocent of a murder charge. Sayers originally intended that at the end of the book Wimsey would marry Harriet and retire from detection, ending

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4368-535: The inclusion of the middle initial. When Sayers was four years old her father accepted the post of rector of Bluntisham-cum-Earith in the Fen Country of East Anglia . The appointment carried a better stipend than the Christ Church posts and the large rectory had considerably more room than the family's house in Oxford, but the move cut them off from the city's lively social scene. This affected

4452-460: The introduction of the Guinness toucan , painted by the artist John Gilroy , for which she penned accompanying verse such as "If he can say as you can/Guinness is good for you/How grand to be a Toucan/Just think what Toucan do". The toucan was used in Guinness's advertisements for decades. Kenney writes that at Benson's, Sayers again enjoyed "some of the fun and camaraderie she had experienced as

4536-408: The jury brings in a verdict of manslaughter , with a strong recommendation to mercy on the ground that "Campbell was undoubtedly looking for trouble". The novel includes a foreword in the form of a personal letter from the author "To my friend Joe Dignam, kindliest of landlords". The letter starts: "Here at last is your book about Gatehouse and Kirkcudbright . All the places are real places and all

4620-628: The last of her full-length books featuring Wimsey. While the play was in rehearsal the organisers of the Canterbury Festival invited Sayers to write a drama for performance in Canterbury Cathedral , following the 1935 staging there of T. S. Eliot 's Murder in the Cathedral , and other plays. The result, The Zeal of Thy House , was her dramatisation in blank verse of the life and work of William of Sens , one of

4704-577: The latter—an all-male group of writers—but became friendly with C. S. Lewis and other members. Sayers, who was considered to have a good contralto voice, joined the Oxford Bach Choir and developed an unrequited passion for its director, Hugh Allen . Later in her time at Oxford, she became attracted to a fellow student named Roy Ridley , later chaplain of Balliol , on whose appearance and manner she later drew for her best-known character, Lord Peter Wimsey . She studied diligently, with

4788-618: The mind as one of the richest, most colorful of her group studies. The Scottish setting, the artists in the colony, the train-ticket puzzle, and the final chase place this triumph among the four or five chefs d'oeuvre from her hand." The Five Red Herrings was adapted for television in 1975 as part of a series starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter and Glyn Houston as Bunter. It has also been dramatised for BBC Radio with Carmichael as Lord Peter and Peter Jones as Bunter. Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers ( / s ɛər z / SAIRZ ; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957)

4872-424: The more interesting for that". The writer Mary Ellen Chase thought that Sayers had never been conventionally beautiful and after attending one of her lectures in the 1930s, she wrote "There can be few plainer women on earth than Dorothy Sayers [but] I have never come across one so magnetic to listen to". In 1931 Sayers collaborated with Detection Club colleagues on a longer serial for the BBC, The Scoop , and on

4956-408: The nature of God's mind. Between 1944 and 1949 she published two volumes of essays and a collection of stories for children, and wrote another religious play, The Just Vengeance , commissioned for the 750th anniversary celebrations of Lichfield Cathedral , which, she later said, was "very stale and abstract" and pleased theologians more than it pleased the actors. Masterpiece Historically,

5040-441: The noble sleuth again"; "We had hardly thought a woman writer could be so robustly gruesome ... a very diverting problem"; "First-rate construction ... a thoroughly satisfactory yarn from start to finish". Sayers's relationship with Cournos continued until 1922. It remained unconsummated because Cournos did not want children and Sayers refused, for religious reasons, to use contraception. After that affair ended she met

5124-455: The novel The Floating Admiral in 1931. From the mid‐1930s Sayers wrote plays, mostly on religious themes; they were performed in English cathedrals and broadcast by the BBC . Her radio dramatisation of the life of Jesus, The Man Born to Be King (1941–42), initially provoked controversy but was quickly recognised as an important work. From the early 1940s her main preoccupation was translating

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5208-411: The pages of tomorrow's newspaper. I saw it, that is, as a judgment of fact, unaffected by its period, unaffected by its literary or dogmatic origins and I recognised at the same moment that the judgment was true. She thought Dante was "simply the most incomparable story-teller who ever set pen to paper", and in addition to the parallels of the world during war, she believed that her society suffered from

5292-906: The rector and his wife differently: he was scholarly and self-effacing; she, like many of the Leigh family—including her great-uncle Percival Leigh , a contributor to the humorous magazine Punch —was outgoing and gregarious and she missed the stimulation of Oxford society. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), Catherine Kenney writes that the lack of siblings and neighbouring children of her own age or class made Sayers's childhood fairly solitary, although her parents were loving and attentive. Sayers formed one lasting friendship in these years: Ivy Shrimpton, eight years her senior, her first cousin as Nell's niece. Shrimpton, raised in California as an infant but educated in an Anglican convent school in Oxford, made extended visits to

5376-455: The rest of their lives. In that year she published Tristan in Brittany , a verse-and-prose translation of the 12th-century poetic fragments of The Romance of Tristan by Thomas of Britain . The scholar George Saintsbury wrote an introduction to the book, and Sayers was praised for making a historically important poem available for the first time in modern English. In 1930 Sayers became

5460-424: The series. Financial necessity, however, led the author to write another five Wimsey novels to provide her with a good income before they were eventually betrothed. Brabazon describes Harriet as Sayers's alter ego , sharing many attributes—favourable and otherwise—with the author. Harriet is described by Wimsey's mother as "so interesting and a really remarkable face, though perhaps not strictly good-looking, and all

5544-417: The term rapidly became used in a variety of contexts for an exceptionally good piece of creative work, and was "in early use, often applied to man as the 'masterpiece' of God or Nature". Originally, the term masterpiece referred to a piece of work produced by an apprentice or journeyman aspiring to become a master craftsman in the old European guild system. His fitness to qualify for guild membership

5628-647: The three books of Dante 's Divine Comedy into colloquial English. She died unexpectedly at her home in Essex , aged 64, before completing the third book. Sayers was born on 13 June 1893 at the Old Choir House in Brewer Street, Oxford ; she was the only child of the Rev Henry Sayers and his wife Helen "Nell" Mary, née Leigh. Henry Sayers, born at Tittleshall , Norfolk, was the son of

5712-523: The time, until I had panted my way through the Three Realms of the Dead from top to bottom and from bottom to top. As well as her work on Dante, Sayers continued to write drama. At the BBC's request she created a cycle of twelve radio plays portraying the life of Jesus , The Man Born to Be King (1941–42), which, Kenney observes, were broadcast to "a huge audience of Britons during the darkest days of

5796-465: The trains are real trains, and all the landscapes are correct, except that I have run up a few new houses here and there." The first edition was reviewed in The Spectator of 1931 by M. I. Cole, who found the rather indistinguishable artist suspects, and the elaborate examination of timetables, ticket punches and so on, to be really taxing to the intelligence. He noted that Lord Peter Wimsey and

5880-415: The violin and the viola in the school orchestra and forming highly charged friendships. Despite some excellent teachers, Sayers was not happy at the school. Joining at the age of fifteen, rather than the school's normal starting age of eight, she was seen as an outsider by some of the other girls, and not all the staff approved of her independence of mind. As an Anglican with strong high-church views, she

5964-468: The voice of our Divine Saviour and Redeemer" and declared, "to impersonate the Divine Son of God in this way is an act of irreverence bordering on the blasphemous ". The actor Robert Speaight , who played Jesus, said the plays were successful because "we did not approach the parts in a reverential frame of mind. We approached them exactly as if it was any other kind of play". As the series progressed,

6048-462: The writer Evelyn Waugh contrasted Sayers and Christie: Mrs Christie, on the whole, concentrates her ingenuity on a kind of three card trick , "spot the villain", and even exercises a kind of mesmeric influence on the reader in diverting his attention from the significant details. Miss Sayers, on the other hand, devotes herself more to devising unexpected mechanisms of crime and in creating characters who are of real personal interest quite apart from

6132-539: Was Behind the Screen (1930) in which six club members took it in turn to read their own fifteen-minute episodes of a crime mystery on BBC radio. Sayers published two novels in 1930. Prompted by a suggestion from a fellow author, Robert Eustace , she worked on The Documents in the Case . Eustace, a medical practitioner, provided the main plot device and scientific details; Sayers turned them into prose, hoping to write

6216-597: Was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. Born in Oxford , Sayers was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and Somerville College , Oxford, graduating with first class honours in medieval French . She worked as an advertising copywriter between 1922 and 1929 before success as an author brought her financial independence. Her first novel, Whose Body? ,

6300-564: Was co-founder, with Amphilis Middlemore and Charis Ursula Barnett , of the Mutual Admiration Society , a literary society where female students would read and critique each other's work. Sayers gave the group its name, remarking, "if we didn't give ourselves that title, the rest of College would". The society was a forerunner of the Inklings , the informal literary discussion group at Oxford; Sayers never belonged to

6384-490: Was her alleged "special," and nothing would content her but fact. There was, however, a lighter side to this impressive character. Long and slim in those days, small head held alert on slender neck, she loped round Oxford looking for fun. The post with Blackwell lasted for two years, after which Sayers moved to France. She was engaged in 1919 by a school near Verneuil-sur-Avre in Normandy as assistant to Eric Whelpton , who

6468-475: Was judged partly by the masterpiece, and if he was successful, the piece was retained by the guild. Great care was therefore taken to produce a fine piece in whatever the craft was, whether confectionery, painting, goldsmithing , knifemaking , leatherworking, or many other trades. In London, in the 17th century, the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths , for instance, required an apprentice to produce

6552-537: Was not forthcoming and the script was altered; according to her biographer David Coomes, the Wimsey character "looked like a member of the Mafia". Sayers was growing tired of the solitary vocation of a novelist, and was glad to collaborate with her old university friend Byrne on a new Wimsey story written for the theatre. Busman's Honeymoon , "a detective comedy in three acts", had a short provincial tour before opening in

6636-467: Was published in 1923, to mixed reviews; one critic thought it a "somewhat complicated mystery ... clever but crude", and another found the aristocratic Wimsey unconvincing as a detective and the story "a poor specimen of sensationalism ". Some other reviews were more favourable: "the solution does not, as is so often the case, come as an anti-climax to disappoint expectations and lead the reader to feel that he has been 'had' ... We hope to hear from

6720-468: Was published in 1923. Between then and 1939 she wrote ten more novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey . In 1930, in Strong Poison , she introduced a leading female character, Harriet Vane , the object of Wimsey's love. Harriet appears sporadically in future novels, resisting Lord Peter's proposals of marriage until Gaudy Night in 1935, six novels later. Sayers moved

6804-416: Was repelled by the form of Christianity practised at Godolphin, described by her biographer James Brabazon as "a low-church pietism , drab and mealy-mouthed", which came close to putting her off religion completely. During an outbreak of measles at the school in 1911 Sayers nearly died. Her mother was allowed to stay at the school, where she nursed her daughter, who recovered in time to study and sit for

6888-410: Was seven, and she had lessons from governesses in other subjects, including French and German. In January 1909, when she was fifteen, her parents sent her to Godolphin School , a boarding school in Salisbury . Her biographer Barbara Reynolds writes that Sayers took a lively part in the life of the school, acting in plays, some of which she wrote and produced herself, singing (sometimes solo), playing

6972-469: Was teaching English there. She had been in love with him at Oxford, and he was among the models for the appearance and character of Wimsey. In 1921 Sayers returned to London, accepted a teaching position with a girls' school in Acton, London , and began a relationship with a fellow writer, John Cournos . The affair was intense and lasted until October 1922 when Cournos left the country. In 1922 Sayers took

7056-585: Was well received. The Scotsman called it a book to "keep a jaded reviewer out of bed in the small hours"; The Times said that the final twist "is really startling and ingenious, and though the reader is given a perfectly fair chance of guessing it none but the most ingenious can hope to do so"; and the reviewer in The Liverpool Echo called Sayers "the greatest of all detective story writers", though worried that her plots were so clever that some readers might struggle to keep up with them. Over

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