Backlisted - Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Authors Harriet Evans (The Beloved Girls) and Francesca Wade (Square Haunting) join us to celebrate Dorothy L. Sayers's 'novel not without detection' Gaudy Night (1935), perhaps the high point in the classic series of books featuring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers was a feminist pioneer and we discuss her intellectual life and brilliant and unorthodox career. Also in this episode, John dips into The Art of the Glimpse (Head of Zeus), an anthology of Irish short stories edited by Sinéad Gleeson, and reads something short and magical by Dermot Healy; and Andy recommends Tessa Hadley's new book Free Love (Jonathan Cape) in these terms: "Imagine Elizabeth Taylor had written a novel inspired by Richard Thompson's Beeswing." For more information visit backlisted.fm. Please support us and unlock bonus material at https://www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Well, Nick Riddle did that, everybody. Our friend Nick Riddle on the Patreon sent us that. Francesca, what came to mind when you heard that? I wanted to stand up. It's the new national anthem. It's like a national anthem. Should we play it again? Play it again. Play it again. Come on. To those listeners who accuse this podcast of being self-regarding,

I say for sure. So thanks, Nick. Thanks, Nick Riddle, for doing that. And that's the sort of thing people get up to on the Patreon, which is very kind of them. It was actually inspired by our producer, Nicky Birch's request for a version of the theme

tune which would create a feeling of immense drama immediately in the style of the Book of Boba Fett. It's currently showing on Disney+. I think it works. Well, I think we should move from that into the formal

part of the show. Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us driving towards the city of Oxford on a baking hot June afternoon in 1935. We sail

down Headington Hill, across Magdalen Bridge and turn towards Shrewsbury College, founded for women in the late 19th century, and where, amidst the honey-coloured stone quadrangles, trim grass plots, and neat floral borders, something deeply unpleasant is making its presence felt. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher on Bound, the platform where readers crowdfund books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And we are joined today by two new guests, Harriet Evans and Francesca Wade.

Hello to both of you. Welcome. Hello. Harriet is the author of 13 novels, the most recent of which, The Beloved Girls, was published in hardback in August 2021. Before becoming a full time writer, she worked in publishing as an editor, first at Penguin, then Hachette. As a 16 year old, she went to a fancy dress party as Harriet Vane in Claret. Love it. And for several years was a member of the Dorothy L Sayers Society.

Now, before we come on to Dorothy L Sayers, Harriet Evans, what type of fancy dress, what year was this that you did this approximately? Okay, so first of all, it was a fancy dress party held by my parents' friends down the road. On New Year's Eve. my parents friends down the road on new year's eve and i got the husband of the um people having it who was like an uncle to me my parents best friend who is a darling darling man i got him to go as lord peter wimsey i was about 14. Or maybe 16. I do remember my sister, who's three years younger than me,

had somewhere else to be. I was like, no. Lord Peter Wimsey says to Harriet Vane in Have His Carcass, I would like to see you in Claret. I think it would go well with your skin. It has a lovely honey tone. I just thought I was so classy. So I had a next wrap dress, 80s and I lived my best life

and did you stay in character I think so I think when your name's Harriet Evans and you're searching for identity and you think Harriet Vane's really great it's quite easy to stay oh my god your name is almost exactly yeah an anagram it's an anagram itagram, isn't it? An anagram. It's perfect, isn't it? Thanks, Mum and Dad. What did other people dress up as, though? Oh, I don't know. I was a teenager. I was massively self-obsessed. Oh, someone went as lepetamine.

This sounds like a much better New Year's Eve than most of the ones I've ever been to. Brilliant. Goodness me. Well, also, welcome Francesca Wade. Hello, Francesca. Hello. It's great to be here. Francesca is the author of Square Haunting, Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars,

which was published in 2020 by Faber and Faber and read by me and discussed on episode 114 of Backlisted. I think that might be the inheritors, the William Golding episode. So first of all, Francesca, thank you for providing me with five minutes of content for an old episode of Backlisted. That was very kind of you. That's all I dreamed of. I know. Why else would anyone do something as daft as writing a whole book anyway thank you very much i love the book as

people who've listened to that episode no john loves the book as well i think also i wanted to thank you one of the lovely things about square haunting is the number of leads it will give you to other things you might read so it's a it's a great book in its own right, but also, you know, you directed me to Paris by Hope Murley's poem, which is, I know had just been reissued, but gosh, that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. So thank you very much. Also, I wanted to say to you,

how did you feel when the book was published and the publisher approached you and said, we want to put half a dust jacket on it? I thought it was very chic. It wasn't a sort of paper saving cost, I don't think. People who haven't seen The Hardback, what they've done is it's a really well designed book. It's brilliant. It's beautiful. And it's got a sort of two-thirds. What's that called, John? It's just really a fat belly band.

There isn't really a technical term for it. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing the way they designed the book. The end papers are from a female design duo from the 1930s. And the illustration on the front was done by an artist called nina fuga kind of taken after a painting by a kind of pretty much unknown artist called margaret jolliffe who lived in mecklenburg square in the 30s and that's the view from her window and she painted it and and so the book sort of has its roots in the in these women artists from the past. That's fascinating. But everybody, carry forth the phrase fat belly band into your daily lives.

There you go. For future use. I give it to you freely, Andy. Francesca is currently working on her second book, Gertrude Stein, An Afterlife. Are you doing any exciting travelling for that, Francesca? Are you going anywhere for that um i wish i was i mean it's one of the difficult things about this book has been that i guess i started work on it uh shortly after the pandemic hit and not only was there a travel ban on america

but the library where all gertrude stein's papers are has been closed um since march 2020 they're all her papers in yale and in fact i mean part of my well my book is afterlife it sounds like i'm following square haunting with another sort of ghostly um project but this is really about her kind of stein's sort of legacy the way during her lifetime she kind of figured herself as this sort of myth and legend which from the autobiography of alice b toclis and i'm writing about the way during her lifetime she kind of figured herself as this sort of myth and legend which from the autobiography of Alice B. Tockless and I'm writing about the way she kind of set things up after so that after her death all of her work would be published and she'd have a sort of legacy that she could feel assured by and one of the things she did was give all of her papers to

Yale in her lifetime so that there would be a definite stock for future biographers and scholars but they are currently shut out so that's been slowed progress I've just read Tracy Thorne's book about Lindy Morrison which which was terrific I might talk about on a future episode and there's a strange thing built into that now where she talks about being in Australia in mid to late 2019. And a bit of your brain is already now thinking, get that in while you can get that in while you can like, like on when you watch grand designs as the,

as the clock ticks towards March, 2020, and they still haven't put a roof on, it's tense. Well, I hope you get over there, Francesca. I hope things open up safely and easily. John? Well, the book, if you haven't guessed, that we're here to discuss is Gordie Knight by Dorothy L Sayers, her classic detective novel

first published by Victor Galantz in 1935. It was the tenth book by Sayers to feature Lord Peter Whimsey, but the real star of this novel, as I'm sure we'll discuss, is Harriet Vane, making her third entrance, having previously appeared in Strong Poison and Have His Carcass. Gordie Knight is often referred to as the first feminist mystery novel. But before we put on our gowns and file into hall,

Andy, I'm compelled to ask, what have you been reading this week? Thank you. I've been reading a novel called Free Love by Tessa Hadley, and I'm sure lots of listeners will have read novels by Tessa Hadley before. This is her eighth. It was published a few weeks ago by Jonathan Cape I think maybe on New Year's Day somebody sent me

a friend sent me a link to a review of this novel saying someone's grown a novel in a lab specifically to appeal to you and it said sex arrives in suburbia in 1967.

So my friend wasn't wrong. I sort of thought, well, I'm probably going to enjoy that. And I really, really did. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I think it's the best book I've read so far this year. It's about a family, the Fisher family, this year. It's about a family, the Fisher family, who seem to belong to a slightly older age of mum, dad, two children, nuclear family, I suppose you'd call it. Phyllis, who is married to Roger, who works in the foreign office, and their two children, Colette, who is a bookish teenager,

teenager and their younger son Hugh who is much loved. Tessa Hadley is well known as a writer in the tradition I suppose of somebody like Elizabeth Taylor and certainly Free Love struck me as though Elizabeth Taylor had written a novel inspired by Richard Thompson's song, Bee's Wing. It is gloriously careful with its detail while being very resonant with the world which we live in at the moment. And that's quite a trick to pull off when you're writing about such a, a, a well plumbed subject as the 1960s, and particularly the revolution of the late 1960s. The comparison to Elizabeth Taylor, I think, is exact as well in terms of the prose.

And what I've noticed in the reviews for Free Love is that there are some really good reviews, but there are some quite negative reviews. And the terms of the negative reviews are remarkably similar to the things for which Elizabeth Taylor was criticized in her lifetime. The setting is too domestic. The prose is rather bland. But the thing is, the prose isn't bland. The prose is extremely good. So good, in fact, that it requires you, the reader, to get your skills together to appreciate what's going on. Now, I don't mean to say that people who review these books for

national newspapers have read quickly and haven't been paying attention. That would be, imagine such a thing. I would never say that. But I found the level of engagement in the novel by Tessa Hadley with the eye for flowers, settings, furnishings, the wit with which that is presented to you, the reader. It's a very funny book. And also, I mean, personally, and bear in mind, this is something on which I could probably say that I am an expert.

I thought the scenes set in Labyrinth Grove in the late 1960s were really excellent. set in Labrador Grove in the late 1960s were really excellent. Feats of imagination outside of her comfort zone, but perhaps more importantly, the reader's comfort zone. So a reader who's used to reading Tessa Hadley would go to her novels and say, oh yes, well, she can do this suburban thing. But I don't know if she could. Well, I'm saying she can do the Labrador Grove thing as well. I found it. I just thought it's a wonderful, wonderful novel. Anyway, I'm going to read a little bit now from a chapter where Phyllis has dropped out, left home, moved into her lover's flat in Labyrinth Grove.

Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, Nicky went to get the train to Ipswich where his mother would pick him up. In her sleep, it felt luxurious to Phyllis at first to have the narrow bed to herself. Dozing, facing the wall, she could imagine that Nicky was still in the room behind her. He had left her sleeping in the bed sometimes, in this last week, when he got up to sit reading or writing at his desk. It was a freezing winter's day. Pale sunlight glimmered on the white paint,

and when she sat up, eventually she could see the bare twigs of the plane trees through the window, lead pencil strokes against an icy sky. Shuddering with cold she got up to switch on the electric fire and boil the kettle then climbed back inside the blankets to drink her tea wrapped in an old shirt of Nicky's suffused in his smell. On that first day she was almost glad he'd gone. Her emotion when she was with him, in the weeks since she'd run away from the Holmeses party, had been too overwhelming. Now, while she was alone, she could begin her new life. She resisted the desire to fold Nicky's clothes into the chest of drawers, or put away his books on the shelves built out of pine planks and bricks.

She mustn't spoil her new happiness, she thought, by falling back into these patterns, cleaning up and organising things, arranging the furniture more attractively. In her old life she'd only been half alive, too busy perfecting the appearance of herself and her home for others to admire. Now she was taking her first faltering steps away from that falsehood. Already there was an outpost of her belongings on one of Nicky's shelves. She'd had to go foraging in Peter Jones, buying make-up and underwear and a hairbrush, a pullover and wool skirt because she couldn't wear her cowl neck all the time, a flowery sponge bag for transporting her wash things into the shared bathroom.

To pay for these things, she'd use money from the bank account where she kept what she'd inherited from her mother. She wouldn't take anything that was Roger's. When the light began to go, she switched on the angle-poised lamp, poured herself a glass of sherry, then went through Nicky's LP and played Bob Dylan on his black box portable record player. She'd known who Dylan was.

She and Roger had joked about his rough voice. Poor fellow, he can't sing. But she'd never attended to these songs before or anything like them. Roger had taken her to classical concerts, or when she was at home alone, she'd listen to whatever was on the radio, pop or dance bands. Now, the intimacy of this new music pierced and enveloped her. She might never have found out if she hadn't met Nicky, if she hadn't sought him out and followed him here, leaving

everything behind, that this new shape of being existed. The glamour of it and its seductive invitation, careless and mocking and free. Nicky and Bob Dylan mingled together in her mind. She thought that she was in love with this voice, these words. Phyllis played the two records in the double album over and over, especially Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, which seemed to speak to her intensely, as if she herself were the sad-eyed lady. Nicky had other Dylan LPs too, but this one was enough for now. It was almost too much. She drank more sherry and danced in her stockinged feet like a girl, in the dim light in the bare room,

which was deliciously warm by this time from the electric fire. She was filled up with the music's beauty and its emotion, with her new full life and her own deep, interesting story. It didn't matter if this had come to her too late when she was already 40. There was only this moment, this joy now. Beautiful. I love this book.

I absolutely love it. You're going to see me go wanging on about it for months to come. It does sound like Miller catnip. Indeed. John, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading a big collection of Irish short stories called The Art of the Glimpse, edited by Sinead Gleeson. Excellent.

It's an absolutely marvellous collection of stories. You know, I'm always a bit in two minds. You know, we've been talking a lot about poetry on the podcast and how important individual collections of poetry are. I kind of feel that a little bit about short stories as well. I like to read the original. But when you do get a good anthology and this is huge in its scope it starts with a story by Sheridan Lefenu Dublin born writer of supernatural

stories a marvelous story called the village bully it's arranged alphabetically which I kind of love because it's not making any attempt to try and do a historical scope. Although the historical scope is incredible because you've got stories, really well-chosen stories from Joyce and Beckett and Brendan Bean and Elizabeth Bowen and Frank O'Connor, what you might call the kind of classic John Magard, classic kind of through to Anne Enright and Bernard McLavity. It's kind of generational. And it's also, it's got

fantastic short stories. Lovely Maeve Binchy in there. Great Marianne Keyes. There is something in this book for everyone. A brilliant Kit Duvall story. But also, more experimental stuff. David Hayden, Keith Ridgway,

contemporary stuff from Claire Keegan who I love lovely sexy story by Mary Costlow, Claire Louise Bennett you come out of it reeling at the talent, Shat Sally Rooney of course I've been dipping into it it's really good

fantastic collection isn't it and amazing that it yes they're all Irish but it's it makes Ireland, you feel that you're looking at it in a completely different, it isn't giving you the sort of the usual narrative about town versus country and, you know, annoying priests. And I mean, they're all in there,

but it's just, I just felt it's so fresh. I mean, Sinead's done an amazing job editing it and choosing. I'm going to read a story that I had completely forgotten existed from Dermot Healy, who we obviously are fond of on the show. But I'm going to read it because it's incredibly short, but incredibly strong and powerful. And it was from his collection banished misfortune which was published by allison and bosby back in the 80s but the best way to get into an anthology is to is to read from it so here we go reprieve is what it's called they took a taxi out of birmingham to their modest lodgings she sat so silent it seemed her mind had slipped from her peter paid the driver handsomely

then he argued with her in the room there's still time to go back on this he repeated she held her silence she undressed and got carefully into bed he kept talking away fretting worrying her at this last moment he had ceased being the most generous man in the world yesterday she had had the final consultation with the doctor. It seems, he said, that you have your mind made up. Sheila said, I have. I say no reason then for any delay, he replied. She had got up, crossed to the door, counting every step, trying to appear a confident, mature, strong woman. She must, she had thought, show him. At the door she fainted. She blamed the heat, strong woman. She must, she had thought, show him.

At the door she fainted. She blamed the heat in the room. She said, don't take this for weakness or anything like that. The doctor nodded. Tonight, this man here, her confident and financial advisor and lover, was having his moral fidgetings. At long last it came, what had been building up in her all night. From the first anxious strain at her heart muscles, from all the days moving between the cottage and the town, now it would happen. The tears burst out, or just burst out of her eyes, streamed away from her. Then came from her loins and wrists, happy, life-giving tears, and, God, it took the agony out of the room.

He tried holding her, thinking his advice had won her. She let him. Then, as the crying subsided, she said, Look what you're doing. Your boots are ruining the white bedspread. That his untidiness should strike her just then was unbelievable, to have cared for a strange bedspread in a strange house where she would only spend two nights. But why should he lie there, turning his boots into the bedstead, talking so manfully of choices and life and marriage? Morning, he dropped her off at the hospital. She was the youngest in the ward. Most were married women of about 40 who didn't want any more children. A doctor came and gave her a spectacular shot in the arm. He said, this will relax you. There were an awful lot of women being pushed

to and fro and she among them in wheelchairs. You waited about in wheelchairs for your turn. They chatted there in the corridor, high as sparrows on the morphine. At last, it was after a day, she was pushed in on a trolley to an amazing place she'd never been before. There was the great light orchestration of the operating theatre and the doctors in their green outfits moving about, talking quietly. I want to tell you something, doctor, she said. You're awful nice, but that injection you gave me, it was very good, but you see, I'm mad awake. She laughed and laughed. good, but you see, I'm mad awake. She laughed and laughed. What has you so happy? He asked, filling a new syringe, so thin and fine against the round tubular lighting. Of course, all she looked at was his eyes to see if he was a man or a boy. She couldn't tell him, but the flesh between her elbows and shoulders flushed with giddiness and happiness. They pulled back her single white covering. I hope, she said, as he again lightly tipped the pinprick into the crook of her arm, that this one works.

I mean, just in terms of the art of the glimpse, it's just a little tiny glimpse. So that's published by Head of Zeus, isn't it? I looked this up and it's like, it's, I mean. 2020, so it's still in hardback. I don't think it's come out in paperback yet. But if you're, I mean, if you want to just, as it were, you know, like sort of cheese thing into it to get the best of Irish writing. I mean, it's an amazingly strong anthology and as diverse and as rich as you would hope. So I strongly recommend it.

Well, if you've got any book tokens left, there's that, there's Tessa Hadley. So what a bravura start. For more than 700 years, Oxford has flourished as a centre of learning and culture. Through calm and storm, triumph and disaster, it has grown in greatness and knowledge, making a continuous contribution to the civilisation of the Western world. Students from far-off empire lands, rich men's sons and scholarship winners from the grammar schools of Britain's industrial areas, here they all have equal chances.

Some of them come just to have a good time, others to work and study as if their lives depended on it. Glorious. Oxford. Those were the days. Yeah. glorious those were the days yeah uh so the book we're talking about today is gaudy night by dorothy l sayers have i said that right everybody i'm throwing that out to the panel how how should i say how should i say gaudy night gaudy night gaudy night what is it my book's audio book got a bad review because apparently the reader pronounced it Gaudi Night, which you haven't even put in as a suggestion.

Is that right? It's not about the... It's not set in Barcelona, no. It's set in Oxford. If I were in Oxford and it were Gaudi Night, would I say Gaudi Night? Gaudi Night. You'd say you're going to a Gaudi, is what you would say.

Okay. That will never happen. You say you're going to a Gordie, is what you would say. Okay. That will never happen. Well, you never know, Andy. You might get invited. I might get another 35th attempt, yes, you're right.

Honorary deal it. Yeah. Let me ask them, Harriet, you chose this book, for which much thanks. Huge thanks. When did you first read it or when did you first encounter lord peter whimsy and harriet vane i watched the tv series from the 80s with edward and I was about 13 and my parents had loads of, you know, Agatha Christie, Naomi Marsh, Dorothy Sayers in the house. My dad was a huge Raymond Chandler fan.

There were lots of green penguins. And I'd read a fair bit of those sort of thinner books, as it were. And this was on TV and it was quite a big deal. You know, it was a, know um quite a successful series and i was completely transfixed by it i had my hair cut in a shingled bob like harriet vane and then mum said that's fine that you've watched them but you know you'd really like the books but you need to start with strong poison and and work your way through and I think I actually started earlier than that and went and read the nine tailors which many people say and I would be one of them is a strong contender for the greatest

crime novel ever written I went towards it like you do when you're a teenager. And it's only when you look back on it, on things that really struck and stayed with you, that you start to see the pattern of what the person you were becoming was and why in particular that meant so much to me. Yeah, sure. Not just that my name is Harriet Evans and she's called Harriet Vane.

John, I don't know about you. I felt with Gould, God, you know what? I'm going to get a block on saying it. With this novel, I found there was something of the season finale about it, though we wouldn't have used that term in the 80s. It felt like a culmination of threads that had been woven by the writer for several

books before that. But how many, Harriet, how many novels are there altogether? How many of these novels did Dorothy Sayers write? I think she wrote 10 or was it 11? What's really interesting about gaudy night is it is different in tone to the others and she wrote one more full-length mystery which is busman's honeymoon which was um about a honeymoon i don't think there's any spoiler to say and that was an adaptation of the stage play, which she and one of her friends wrote. And then after that, there are a couple of short stories and a couple of kind of little bits and pieces there. But she didn't write another full length whimsy novels.

This is the last full length intentional Lord Peter whimsy novel she wrote. And the earlier ones are much more classic 20s and 30s crime gosh they're good and what I really love about this is the way it plays with the tropes of all of those it knows the rules she was you know a proud crime novelist and she knew what she needed to do but it's also Dorothy L Say Sayers, who I'm sure we'll talk about this in a bit, was just a massive enthusiast about everything. Just saying, I'm going to really, with Gordie Knight,

write what I want to. And there are letters she wrote saying, I know this book is probably completely commercially unviable and, you know, absolutely bonkers, but it's the book I wanted to write. And of course, that's why it works so well and it actually became her best-selling detective novel even though I think she wrote to her publisher I know it doesn't yeah just to pick up on Harriet's little point about the kind of

narrative of this in terms of Sayers's career it's it's interesting that she moved into writing this book that is very much a detective novel, but is sort of so much sort of wider, perhaps, than the kind of jigsaw puzzle novels she'd written before. And it was a kind of personal challenge to her as well. She wrote a really interesting essay a couple of years after the book was published about its origins. years after the book was published about about its origins and in it she talks about how she had kind of become bored by um sort of putting her character through these kind of puppet maneuvers and um you know like a kind of crossword puzzle she knew exactly how she could get him from a to b just as in fact in the book harriet vane is writing a novel and is and has found that it's almost too perfectly plotted and there's no life in it um and this is why she

wanted to set out and for more reasons which perhaps we'll come on to wanted to take it further and write a very different sort of novel francesca let me ask you then when did you first because you you write about dorothy elsa as one of the five women you focus on in square haunting when did you first uh run into her? I think I actually just ran into her when I was coming up with the idea for Square Haunting, which, I mean, all the five women in my book lived at some point in the interwar period

in Mecklenburg Square in Bloomsbury. And I'd sort of come to the idea for the book through the coincidence that H.D. and Virginia Woolf had lived in the very same square in two different wars and I knew Woolf and I'd studied HD at university and so that sort of set me off on this idea of kind of investigating this place which they had shared and came to discover that Dorothy Sayers had lived in the very same room that H.D. had lived in. And they had talked about the same landlady. And I came to discover that they had had, bizarrely, relationships with the very same man, even though they definitely didn't meet each other.

And it's pretty hard to find two either characters or writers who would really have less in common than hd and dorothy says and so i started off on a you know investigating mecklenburg square and literature and you don't have to look too much further than the opening lines of gordy knight to sort of find everything i was looking for really well i think we're going to hear those in a minute but did you therefore in the name of research force yourself to read all dorothy sayers very entertaining novels that's right i did yeah well done what a sacrifice i think i found a job lot of them in this amazing little bookshop in sort of by fulham broadway station which i've sort of i think i just found it once i've never been there or found it again, but it had a complete run of old paperbacks of Dorothy Sayers. And I bought them all for about a pound each and made my way through.

I think also starting with Strong Poison because of this connection with this villain, John Cornos, who I was interested in, who is the disguised unlucky Philip boys in that book and then moved through Have His Carcass, the next Harriet Peter novel, which is very important in the sort of lead up to Gordie Knight. And so then that was the triumphal conclusion. And then I went back and read the rest. The series finale. It is very good.

It's a season finale, right? It is really good. It's very good. John, Oxford's John Mitchinson. You live near Oxford. You have a long-standing relationship with Oxford. Have you ever read this book before we did this? It's almost completely baffling to me that I had not read it.

Because I've known about it since I was an undergraduate. And it's always been a book that I've meant to read. But I don't mean this to sound in any sense patronising. It was just much richer and bigger and deeper and madder than I was expecting. I was expecting a classic detective story set in Oxford and it is on one level that, but it's so much more than that. And it's also some of, it really, really really it's the writing about oxford in it the evocative the understanding of of of oxford and particularly that a woman's college at that

particular historical juncture financially unstable still kind of still trying to find its way in an incredibly kind of male uh and and and chauvinistic university. It's a brilliant, brilliant novel. I'm going to say what a fascinating, gripping, and weird novel. Really? It's a really strange book in terms of how

it mixes up those elements and she manages to pull it off through sheer force of intelligence and personality, I would argue. There's so many things that shouldn't work in that book. So beautifully written as well. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, we'll be reading from it.

It's amazing. So it's shot right to the top of my, you know, knocks bride's head off, briefly at least, from the top of my Oxford novels. Brideshead off briefly, at least for my top of my Oxford novels. I think what's so interesting about her is she seemed to sort of reject her former self as a really, really brilliant crime writer. And what what partly makes the novel work so well is this is a woman who is in complete control of her material. And when you've read it multiple times, like I have, and you can see, you know, they can keep the harmony, leave us the counterpoint, he says at one point. Talk about bark. But you see, this is a woman who she can have harmony and counterpoint. I'm not sure how long this will hold up for but she she's got such a huge brain and she's so into so many different things but at the heart of it is very well

structured incredibly good plotting characterization and a desire to serve the reader well. And then on the top of that is just this, yeah, madness and intense romance. And it's a very romantic book. And, you know, in my old career as an editor and in my career now as a novelist, what romance means and what it doesn't drives me up the wall, because some of the most romantic books are not romances and Fifty Shades of Grey is not a romance. You know, there's nothing about this. This is heart-stoppingly romantic and one of the things I love about about it so much is how she does it all and she does it really really really well okay so I'm just gonna what we're gonna do is Harriet you're gonna read us the beginning of the novel in a minute I think which is great and I am going to read, to set this up,

the blurb, and this is the flap copy from the first US edition of Gordie Nights, published in 1935. You know the original jacket, the dust wrapper, said, a novel not without detection, in which Lord Peter plays the leading part. Just in case you were worried. A novel not without detection, in which Lord Peter plays the leading part. Just in case you were worried. A novel not without detection. This is the US blurb.

And this is a first on this show. This blurb actually comes with four bullet points, numbered one to four. So it's laying out for you why you would want to read the book. One, Gordy Knight, which gives this new full-length mystery its title, is a night of special significance at Oxford University where the chief events of this story take place. Two, in the solution of the mystery created during or after the celebrations of Gordie Night,

Lord Peter Whimsey plays his usual essential role. Three, this mystery is also a novel. This novel is also a romance, culminating in a moment as delightful for Lord Peter as for Harriet Vane. Harriet's laughing a lot, listeners. You can't necessarily hear her, but she is. Four, the first review of this new book appeared in the London Times Literary Supplement, concluding with these words, quote, the interplay of interests of psychology and detection is so subtle and well-ordered

that Gordie Knight stands out even among Miss Sayers' novels, and Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself. I mean, it's a slightly over-regimented blurb, but it's kind of like, I think that was pretty good for 1935. What do you think, Francesca? Well, it gets

to the sense, I mean, one of the major themes leading to the kind of glory of the denouement is the idea

of a relationship of equals. I mean, whether it's fair to sum that up as delightful for Harriet as for Peter seems a bit begrudging.

We might come on to that. Yes, very good point. And I think it's a bit of a stretch, though, to say that Lord Peter is essential because, well, perhaps we could debate that. But another point here is that this is the novel where Harriet really gets her chance to shine and to play the lead detective and, I guess, to work out what she can do without Peter. It's three quarters of the book, isn't it, before Whimsy actually appears. Sends the odd letter. We have an April the 1st, the traditional day he gets in touch with his annual marriage proposal. With his harassment. With his harassment.

Yes, that's right. Speaking of giving Harriet a chance to shine, would you please read us the opening of Gordie Knight? I literally can't think of anything I'd rather do. Oh, that's so great. Thank you. Harriet Baines sat at her writing table and stared out into Mecklenburg Square. The late Tulips made a brave show in the square garden,

and a quartet of early tennis players were energetically calling the score of a rather erratic and unpractised game. But Harriet saw neither Tulips nor tennis players. A letter lay open on the blotting pad before her, but its image had faded from her mind to make way for another picture. She saw a stone quadrangle built by a modern architect in a style neither new nor old, but stretching out reconciling hands to past and present. Folded within its walls lay a trim grass plot with flowerbeds splashed at the angles and surrounded by wide stone plinths. Behind the level roofs of Cotswold Slate rose the brick chimneys of an older and less formal pile of buildings, a quadrangle also of a kind but still keeping a domestic remembrance of the original Victorian dwelling houses that had sheltered the

first shy students of Shrewsbury College. In front were the trees of Jowett Walk and beyond them a jumble of ancient gables and the tower of New College with its jackdaws wheeling against a windy sky. Oh it's so good. It is great. And everyone listening to this has now started reading Gaudy Nights, so thank you very much, Harriet. They're now committed to it. Hooray. I'd like to ask you both about Harriet Vane then. Francesca, let me ask you first.

To what extent do you think Harriet Vane is a cipher for Dorothy Sayers herself? Is that a leading question? Yes. Yes, it is. It's not a yes or no answer, is it? That's the thing. I'd say to a large extent. I mean, I guess to kind of return to Strong Poison, where she's introduced, we meet Harriet as this, I think she's described as a Bloomsbury blue stocking. She's like Zayas, had been one of the first students at Oxford, had then gone on to make her own living, very determined to be independent and made a name for herself as a detective novelist

and we meet her in the dock on trial for poisoning her former lover um philip boys as i mentioned um the sort of cipher and really this novel is a great demonstration of how to get revenge on someone who's treated you badly you kill them off off. And he has one of the most gruesome deaths of any... Don't do this at home. And she comes there across Lord Peter Whimsey, who is determined to get her off. He's sure that she didn't do it, and indeed she didn't. And he manages to get her off,

and it ends really with him for the first time proposing marriage but um in this essay that i mentioned about how the origins of gordy knight dorothy says says that she actually started writing strong poison with the intention of killing off lord pizza sacrilege but she said she sort of i mean she you know it's interesting we might get on to talking about some of her later work her dante translations um her sort of religious plays she she writes that she sort of started off writing detective novels because she wanted to write bestsellers really she needed she wanted to make a money through her writing and she knew that um you know that detective fiction was popular and that she could do it and she loved detective novels.

She was never at all kind of snobbish about different sort of kinds of literature, but she'd done well. She'd made money through the series and at this point she felt it was sort of no longer challenging her. And she had this idea as Conan Doyle kills off Sherlock Holmes,

that she would marry off Peter at the end of Strong Poison, he'd live happily ever after, and that would be that. But she writes in kind of creating this character, Harriet Bane, who she all but admits was not only a sort of cipher of herself, but actually almost a projection of how she might have liked to kind of live herself and there are certain kind of aspects of her own life i think she particularly her sort of married life and domestic setup that she wasn't totally satisfied with even though she was very satisfied with her

work um and she kind of realized that to to let harriet who was deeply in debt really to Lord Peter, who'd just saved her life, to allow Harriet to just marry him and go off on the basis of that and never be heard of again, would be doing a total disservice to this character that she'd created. And actually, the question that Sayers was becoming more interested in was whether it would be possible for Harriet, as she perhaps in life had not managed to achieve herself to find a balance of intellectual and emotional satisfaction and I think that was the question that kept nagging at her and persuaded her to keep going with Lord Peter and and with Harriet and just to write Half His Carcass and then ultimately to write Gordie Knight

with that very question at its core. Harriet Evans, we know that you bobbed your hair in tribute to Harriet Walter playing Harriet Vane. This kind of pile up of Harriets. What's so appealed to you about the character then and how does that contrast with how you came to understand her when you found out more about Dorothy Sayers? She is very likeable.

You like her. She is one of those people who has... She's quite a definite person. You get a sense of her in Strong Poison and in Havis Carcass, which is quite a lot of which is from her point of view. I think almost all of it is from her point of view. And in Gordie Nights. And she is successful doing what she loves and is good at it.

And she's quite funny and humorous. And she's just intensely likable. But it's also really important to kind of contextualize how unusual that is. She is a successful, attractive, younger woman. stressful attractive younger woman and when you're say 13 14 year old me when you read naio marsh and marjorie allingham there is a lot of misogyny in them you know there's a lot of really i've really given up rereading naio marsh actually you know there's so much kind of dislike for a lot of the people who see in them agatha Christie's different. Agatha Christie is just plots and shocks brilliantly, brilliantly done. But when you're trying to find what books

and what things you identify with when you're younger and you're a girl who likes books, you know, I liked Cagney and Lacey and I liked tennis and I liked the Golden Girls and I often make jokes about all those things. I look back now and I think I like tennis because that was the only thing it was you saw girls my age playing it you you know you could go to Wimbledon after school which I did and see them so again I think it's that thing of

when I was rereading it earlier this year I found incredibly moving this thing she drives down to Oxford and she makes a point of doing it in quite a stately mature way she she orders half a bottle of wine don't drink and drive folks and lunch at a pub and she tips the waitress and when I bought my first flat and when I got my book deal I remember really clearly thinking you know that that I'm a lady novelist and I wrote and that kind of sense that I didn't realise how unusual it was then for her to have been that person. And Dorothy L. Sayers isn't preachy. You know, the whole thing about Shrewsbury and the Women's College and everything, it could be so angry. I would be angry if I was her.

You get a slight sense of the curtain being drawn back and the panic when Harriet says to Peter or someone, you know, we can't we can't let you know this. This whole thing will crumble to the ground if this poltergeist who's causing all this disruption, who's sending all these people poison pen letters. We haven't really described the plot so far, but that's essentially what's happened. This horrible campaign is being waged against this in this women's college with somebody who's clearly got a grudge against women's education. And this sense of it being something that needed to be preserved and is fragile doesn't really it's not it doesn't have heat around it. It's treated in a rather wry fashion they're all

immensely interesting women and that's unusual as well yeah yeah it's a brilliant setup don't you think i was trying to think because as you say they're all really interesting women they all have slightly different kind of takes on what the academic life requires but they all have a commitment to keeping to keeping the college afloat financially and you know that sense of it having started as a group of small group of victorian buildings and now they've built you know a bigger quadrangle and they're just opening a new library it's you realize it's quite rare to have a book from any period in the first half of the 20th century that is dominated by women taking decisions, having agency, talking with one another. The book is like a sort of series of

sort of platonic Socratic dialogues, isn't it? There's so many conversations of people exchanging ideas about life. Women exchanging ideas about life and marriage. about life yes women exchanging ideas about life and marriage also driven forward by its author's conviction that what she's writing about is interesting yeah you know if you try to pitch that book you'd really struggle i'm not kidding even now you would really really struggle but when you're in it and you're reading it there's no there's no uh milia you'd rather be part of and there's no story you'd rather know what happens next in because because she's totally committed to feeling it needs to be told yeah i think that comes over really loud and clear we've talked about harry sorry yeah i'm gonna pick the follow on from harriet's point you you really get a sense of the kind of precarity of the position

of the Women's College without it ever being, you know, driven home. I mean, women's, Sayers, of course, knew this herself, because she, she actually took part in the very first degree ceremony at Oxford that included women in 1920. And she'd been at Somerville about six years earlier, and sort of the second generation, I guess, of women students. Somerville had opened in 1879, I think, with seven students and progressively had grown and women were allowed to take exams. And so by this point, you get a... In Gordie Knight, one of the things I love is the slight generational divide

between the older dons who are who are so aware of how hard it was to work to get to this point and the young students who sort of sunbathe on the on the quad and don't work hard enough they're not interested in administration they're just interested in young men yeah but the sense of it you know disrepute being brought on the college um you know it may it may not or may or may not be a matter of life and death but it's a serious serious problem if well it's it's a kind of completely important plot device as well isn't it because they they don't want the scandal of these of what's happening these um really awful you know kind of obscene kind of drawings and and rude letters and poison to get out because that would, you know, the college's status is precarious.

And it's always under threat. I mean, it was in 1927, the series actually makes a reference to this, and I think it's unnatural death. In 1927, there was a statute imposed that limited the number of female students and forbade any women's college from expanding their premises. So there's a sense that even though progress was being made, it was simultaneously being kind of drawn back. One of the things that I really enjoyed in this book was the way we've talked about Harriet Vane. We're going to hear an expert witness on um lord peter whimsy in a moment but the way lord peter whimsy is as we would say now uh you know what is he at no point does she waste any time with him voicing a different opinion about women's education do you know what i mean he's just there all the time on side taking it as a fact of life and so much the better

yes although what i do find hilarious about say is i think she's quite infatuated with him as you would be that's time you're right. Yeah. He walked in complete in spats, apparently. That was when she was inventing it. I just love that idea. My mum always kind of jokes that, because she's a huge Sayers fan and the person whose copies I stole and still have, sorry, mother,

that, you know, Lord Peter Wimsey is kind of, he's brilliant at absolutely everything. So the Nine Tailors starts when they're ringing this eight hour peel to try and beat the previous record in this very very very remote village in the fens and um one of the peelers um the campanologists is taken ill and lorpe twins car breaks down nearby but lo and behold he is an expert at Kent, Bob, Major,

Triple, whatever, and knows the whole, you know, just completely randomly walks in. And so with this, of course, you know, when he comes to the dinner or any time he has an encounter with the Don, in this, you're like, yeah, what a great feminist book. But every single time he has a conversation with any of them, they always end up deferring to him and saying, yes, of course,

I see Aristotle in an entirely new light based on this 30 second conversation. Well, you discovered these via the 1980s television adaptation starring Edward Petherbridge. And I found this lovely clip of Edward Petherbridge talking about both the making of that series with Harriet Walter, as we've said, as Harriet Bain, and also his analysis of the character of Lord Peter Winsley. And this is worth hearing in full. I just think this is wonderful. How did you enjoy playing the role of Lord Peter Winsley?

When I looked at it last night, looking at the tapes, I thought that must have been fun. You know, you never enjoy things enough at the time, do you? You know, little did I realise what a sort of champagne and oysters gift it was. Well, I suppose I did in a way. Dorothy Sayers wrote that the essential Peter Whimsey had a romantic soul at war with a realistic brain. Would you go along with that? Oh, did she write that?

She was absolutely right. She was absolutely right. What elements of his character did you want to bring to the fore? Well, his wit wit of course and his control and command but all the time there's always the other side of there's also the flip side which is flip side he would never use a coarse phrase like that how coarse terribly coarse and the other side of the coin which is extreme vulnerability, extreme shyness. He's a show-off and he's shy. He's brave and he's, he would call himself cowardly about some things, tough. Yes, quite tough, but at the same time, as I've said, vulnerable.

He calls himself silly and he knows he's just more intelligent than anybody else in the whole series. I know I have a silly face, he says, but I can't help that. And yet he, and yet in saying that he has the confidence to say to this wonderful woman, albeit that she has been charged with murder, will you marry me? I'm just sorry we have to return to the conversation. I seriously could listen to that for hours on end.

What so brilliant. But actually, I think that there's an analysis of Peter Whimsey, Harriet. That's sort of a piece with what you're saying. There's nothing he can't do, right? He's alpha and omega all the time. He's tough when he needs to be and he's sensitive when he needs to be. And he's sort of an intellect. He's the intellectual ideal, isn't he?

He's the intellectual ideal with the emotions folded in. Yes, that's a very good way of putting it. There's a lot of sort of meta references to John Donne and the metaphysical poets throughout this. And he is sort of one thing and the other a lot of the time, Whimsy. I think Edward Petherbridge was the first person I saw to play him. I think Whimsy has a slightly better sense of humour in the books than the TV adaptation shows. He's a little more self-aware and less cold fish like to me. And what's really good is in earlier books, like The Unpleasantness of the Bologna Club, which is about Whimsy being a member of this old gentleman's club, which is just wonderful.

It opens on Armistice Day. And Whimsy has terrible, terrible... Shell shock. Shell shock. And is really affected by this. And she's managed to seed that in. But because she's done so much with him, even though you think he's quite a thin character in the early books

and just a silly ass about town, you know, Mayfair and all of that. But she has done enough to make him real that when he starts to come out a little bit more engorged, well, starting in Strong Poison, you're ready for it. And that's what makes him such an attractive person. And as you say, it's very unusual that he really does love her for exactly the person she is which is this you know she lived with someone else which was a massive massive deal he loves her for her brain first and I think this is massive supposition but I suspect

Dorothy L Sayers didn't come across a lot of men who said, I love you for your brain first, and if you find that person, let me tell you, you stick with them. You know, that's, you know, that's very romantic. Someone who wouldn't ask you to compromise. I mean, that's sort of the heart of it all, how Harriet is so devoted to her work and to her independence, which she has seen threatened in the most sort of dire way before and it would be totally anathema for her to compromise that and yet she knows that she's

in love with with whimsy and um and you know unlike the a lot of the dons who are um some quite hilariously sort of anti-men harriet is interested in the possibility of a you know of a relationship that would you know if it were possible to find a relationship that would complement her rather than curtail her you see he says interestingly working this question out in some other um sort of text the same i think a similar time to writing gordordie Knight, she was working on what she called a straight novel about a woman whose husband leaves her and she's spent years devoting herself to him and to their children and home. And after he leaves her,

she goes back to historical research and she never finished the book. But the last scene that's sort of written out in fragments has this woman going for a job interview at a university and the professor interviewing her saying, you you know what have you been doing all this time you know you're a you're a scholar um where have you where have you been um there's a play she wrote as well called love all which is hilarious and it has a man who leaves his wife for another woman and the woman is an actress,

and the actress becomes totally fed up of not being able to go to auditions because she's looking after her husband. So she eventually kind of absconds back to London. And in the meantime, the sort of jilted wife has become a very successful playwright because she no longer had to look after her husband. And it ends up with wife and mistress collaborating on a broadway western success and husband left totally behind i mean i'm guessing that says probably wouldn't have described herself as a as a kind of a capital

f feminist it seems to me it's one of the most interesting feminist texts of that kind of first half of the 20th century, even in small details. Well, I've got a review here from The Times. In 1935, describes Gordie Knight like this, a detective novel with no murders, an Oxford novel with no youthful grievances. So far, cutting across categories, Miss Sayers flouts convention to good purpose. It is as a psychological novel that Gordie Knight threatens for a moment to forfeit our approval. The looking-glass land of the crime story is, by a necessary convention, unreal. The highlights of human depravity are reduced. Murder is less foul, strange, unnatural to contemplate in its amiably

distorting mirror. And in harmony with this, motives must not touch too closely the seamier side of psychology. But if watching her peer into the crater of obscenity and minds diseased, we suffered a momentary fear that missayers would topple and drag us in. Our fears proved liars. The real psychological interest is legitimate, for the detection is an admirable excuse, just as Oxford is a perfect background for discussion on a more than semi-serious plane of the old, insoluble, feminist problem of woman and the intellectual life. It is a problem as a woman detective novelist with no superior of either sex is fully qualified to discuss. And if it had no other merits, which, of course, it has, Gordie Knight would deserve high praise for succeeding here alone. Pretty good, I think, for the times for 1935, don't you think? Even use the f word yeah and what's so interesting is you have all these different stances as you've said i kind of i'm laid out it's not binary you

know for or against there's various the really interesting thing that rereading it last year i think for the first time since i had children is the one thing that there's no go on is poor old mrs godwin who's the, who's got a little boy. I mean, she just shouldn't be allowed to work. The kid's constantly being sick. And you think this is where we're at then. And I guess that's the next sort of, I'm about to use the world's most horrific fiction cliche, women having it all.

most horrific fiction cliche, women having it all. Sayers, of course, had a child out of wedlock, in complete secrecy, took herself off, organised the whole thing by herself, pretended to the advertising agency she was working for that she was having an operation and wore large clothes, booked herself into the nursing home when the baby was two, three weeks old, took it to her cousin on the bus, got the bus back because the trains weren't working. And when I think about it, it makes me want to cry with admiration for her, for how positive she was when she'd write these sweet

letters about, I think he's got a really strong little stomach she never felt afraid to self-pity she never thought why have i got into this situation she just got on with it and with this really jolly i just think she seemed like such a remarkable great woman that would floor so many people you know her husband was not very much like lord peter whimsy wasn't matt not much no although he was a good cook he wrote a cookbook and dedicated to my wife who can make an omelette what are the old romantic what a what a lovely man i tell you what dorothy is not just famous for the Peter Whimsey mysteries. She's also famous for her religious plays, notably The Man Born to be King, which caused a huge controversy when it was broadcast on the BBC

because it featured Jesus, who is voiced by an extremely plummy man. Jesus, spook like this. She's famous for The Divine Comedy, and she's a spook like this um she's famous for the divine comedy and she's also famous because she worked in an advertising agency didn't she francesca and one of her innovations is she devised the guinness toucan yeah do you know that johnny did guinness is good for you as her tagline if he can say as you can guinness is good for you how grand to be a toucan just think what two can do very good i mean you know i can i just recommend murder must advertise by dottie says if you want what so-called cozy crime crossed with mad men this is the novel

for you it's wonderful it's wonderful. It's wonderful, this novel. God, it made me laugh. It's so funny, apart from anything else. Yeah, yeah. I think we should hear from Dorothy L Sayers herself. This is a rare clip of her recorded in the 1950s. When modern scientists begin to discuss religion, I often wish that some kindly soul had thought

of sending them to Sunday school, for they do not seem to know the meaning of the words that Christians use. Here, for example, is Mr. Fred Hoyle. He finds the idea of immortality horrible because he himself would not care to live more than 300 years. And he complains that Christians have so little to say about how they propose that eternity shall be spent. Now, Christians have, in fact, said a good deal about the nature of eternal life. In particular, that it does not consist, as Mr. Hoyle seems to

think, of endlessly prolonged time of the kind we know. Take that, Dawkins. That's so great. Frid, Christian. That's very much how I hoped she would sound. She really does, and turned up to 11, I think. So, Francesca, we haven't heard you read anything from Gordie Knight, and I think we really should.

Is there a bit you'd like to share with the group Harriet mentioned um her child um who she who the father was someone she'd really didn't know very well um and hadn't been with very long and as soon as she found out she was pregnant uh turned out that he had a wife and a seven-year-old child already. And it was a pretty amazing part of the story is that he wanted nothing to do with it. But his wife, who was called Beatrice, kind of stepped into the fold and kind of took over. And she helped Sayers. I think her brother was a doctor and she organised for her brother to deliver the child. She and her child stayed and Sayers' flat while Sayers was away, forwarding on her letters with appropriate postmarks, and really kept up the

level of secrecy that Sayers had felt she needed. And that woman, she's called Beatrice, and her maiden name is actually Beatrice Wilson, and is a very minor but quite significant character in Gordie Knight, whose name is Beatrice Wilson, who's an eight-year-old child, the daughter of one of the college servants. And I'm just going to read a little scene from the middle of the book where Harriet Vane bumps into this family on the street.

So she's talking to their mother and saying the children must be a great comfort to her. Yes, madam, there's nothing like having children of your own. They make life worth living. Beatrice here is her father's living image, aren't you, darling? I was sorry not to have a boy, but now I'm glad. It's difficult to bring up boys without a father. And what are Beatrice and Carol are going to be when they grow up? I hope they'll be good girls, madam, and good wives and mothers. That's what I'll bring them up to be. I want to ride a motorcycle when I'm bigger, said Beatrice, shaking her curls assertively. Oh no, darling, what things they say, don't they, madam? Yes, I do, said Beatrice. I'm going to have a motorcycle and keep a garage. Nonsense, said her mother a

little sharply. You mustn't talk so. That's a boy's job. But lots of girls do boy's jobs nowadays, said Harriet. But they ought not, madam. It isn't fair. The boys have hard enough work to get jobs of their own. Please don't put such things into her head, madam. You'll never get a husband, Beatrice, if you mess about in a garage getting all ugly and dirty. I don't want one. I don't want one, said Beatrice firmly. I'd rather have a motorcycle. And Dorothy Sayers loved her motorcycle, didn't she? Yes, she did. Yeah. Today, Oxford looks with confidence to the future, conscious of the great contributions it has made and will continue to make to the world of learning

and to the forward march of civilisation. And now we must leave the Dreaming Spires and the Intrigue. We must leave the dreaming spires and the intrigues. We must leave. Now we must leave the dreaming spires and the intrigues they conceal and offer a huge thanks to Harriet and Francesca for guiding us through the work and life of a remarkable and original woman. And thanks, as always, to our producer, Nicky Birch, for braiding our four feeds into a harmonious whole

and to Unbound for the bottle of 1923 near Steiner. You can download all 155 previous episodes of Backlisted plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website, backlisted.fm. And we're always pleased if you contact us on Twitter and Facebook and now in sound and pictures on Instagram too. You can also show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted.

We aim to survive without paid-for advertising and your generosity helps us do that. All patrons get to hear Backlisted episodes early and for about the same amount as Lord Peter Wimsey's feckless nephew spent each month on fags, lot listeners get to listen to two extra lock-listed a month. Our own junior common room where we three sit, make toast by the fire

and talk about the things we've seen, heard, read in the previous fortnight. Dorothy Sayers turned Dante's Inferno into a bestseller when it was published by Penguin in 1950. And we haven't had time to talk about that much today. But on the next Locklisted, I will be reading from Canto 29 about, topically, the circle of hell where the falsifiers are sent, where they are forced to crawl on all fours amongst a scene of pestilence, which seemed to me perfectly appropriate to our particular historical moment.

But you'll have to tune in to Locklisted for that. Locklisteners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation. And this week's roll call is... Ben Suleiman Skeeter Tim Mainstone Hey Tim Mainstone I love the Reveillus books

are brilliant we love the Reveillus books they are beautiful Claire Maugham Holly Spaulding and Jonathan Thomas thank you for your generosity

and for enabling us to continue to do what we love and enjoy before we go Francesca Wade is there anything particular that we haven't covered that you would like to say about Dorothy Sayers or Gordie Knight?

Well, just that anyone who hasn't read it should go there immediately. And should probably start with Strong Poison because you know they'll want to read them all. Work up to the season finale. Okay. Harriet Evans, is there anything you would like to add? I would also recommend the nine tailors because it's just a oh it's a perfect book it's in insanely good it's outrageous

what a good piece of detective fiction is i'm also going to work on my accent because i feel i sound extremely common after listening to the bridge and that Oxford Oxford guide Christian thank you thanks everyone thanks so much guys that's been

such fun we'll see you all next time everybody and we'll leave you with a special message from one of our Oh, my children, listen to me. I shall not be with you much longer.

Soon, very soon, you will look for me in vain. For as I once told the people, so now I tell you. I am going where you cannot come. In a little while, you will see me no more. And again a little while, and then you will see me indeed, because I am going to the Father.