Podcasts about Gaudy Night

What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha and we covered a lot. What did Agatha Christie read? What did she love about Shakespeare? Was she pro-hanging? Why so much more Poirot than Marple? Why was she so productive during the war? We also talked Wagner, modern art, the other Golden Age writers, nursery rhymes, TV adaptations, poshness, nostalgia, Mary Westmacott, and plenty more. TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to the very splendid Laura Thompson. All of you will know Laura's Substack. She has also written books about the Mitfords, heiresses, Lord Lucan, many other subjects, and most importantly today, Agatha Christie, who died 50 years ago. And there's a new book coming from Laura about Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance.Laura, welcome.LAURA THOMPSON: So lovely to be here, Henry. I'm such a fan of your Substack, as you know.OLIVER: Well, same. Same. This is a mutual admiration call.THOMPSON: Well, thank you. Well, that's what we like.Christie's Favorite WritersOLIVER: Now tell me, what did Agatha Christie like to read?THOMPSON: Oh, a lot the same as us. I discovered she was a huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, as we are. And Nancy Mitford, Muriel Spark. But her big love really was Dickens. She absolutely adored Dickens. I mean, she grew up in a house full of books, you know, and she wrote a screenplay of Bleak House for which she was handsomely paid. And it was never—I know, don't you long to know what that was like? Can you imagine—OLIVER: We've lost it? We don't have the typescript?THOMPSON: I've never seen it. I mean, maybe—I don't know whether it exists somewhere. But I just wonder how she tackled it, what she did. But yes, so that happened. And of course, Shakespeare, as we know from her books, which are full of subliminal and—I mean, you kind of notice them, but you don't have to.OLIVER: Yes. There's Shakespeare in every book?THOMPSON: No, but it's there, particularly Macbeth, which I suppose figures.OLIVER: Yeah.THOMPSON: Like The Pale Horse is completely Macbeth themed. And when I was a kid reading them, I think she really—Tennyson she uses a lot—she affected my reading in a good way.OLIVER: She sent you back to Shakespeare and the poets?THOMPSON: Well, sent me to them as a kid, probably. And also, there's a lot of Bible in her books, as I'm sure you've noticed.OLIVER: Yes. Yes.THOMPSON: Very easy facility with quoting the Bible.Christie and ShakespeareOLIVER: Now, what did she learn from Shakespeare? Because she clearly knows the plays in detail. She sees them a lot. She reads them. She and he are, I think, quite good plotters.THOMPSON: Is she even better than he is?OLIVER: Well, let's not get into that. But there is a sort of, in a funny way, a kind of affinity between them as writers.THOMPSON: That's so interesting.OLIVER: What do you think she learned from him?THOMPSON: Tell me how you—how you see that.OLIVER: Well, do you know that Margaret Rutherford adaptation, which probably you don't like and I do—THOMPSON: Go on.OLIVER: It's called Murder Most Foul, isn't it?THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And there's something about the way that they can both walk the line between the sort of dark and deadly and the histrionic. Margaret Rutherford can't walk that line, but Agatha Christie can, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting.OLIVER: And Miss Marple could come onstage in a couple of the plays. She's not so far off from being a Queen Margaret or some—in her angry moments maybe, do you think?THOMPSON: More rational, maybe.OLIVER: Much more rational.THOMPSON: Not so mad. Well, she's not mad, Margaret, is she? But she's upset.OLIVER: She starts off as a much sort of nastier character—Murder at the Vicarage, right?THOMPSON: Yes, she does. She was more acidic and then gradually—OLIVER: Waspish.THOMPSON: Waspish, and sort of mellowed. I see what you mean. And almost in the way that she calls herself—although that's obviously not Shakespeare—calls herself Nemesis.OLIVER: And the sense of atmosphere.THOMPSON: Yes, and the way they're structured. That's not necessarily just true of Shakespeare, but there is this sort of act three entanglement and this beautiful act five resolution that goes on with a soliloquy, I suppose.OLIVER: And some people think they both get confused in act four, but that's obviously not true, that this is the real mess of the plot. I think she might have learned quite a lot from Shakespeare, right?THOMPSON: That's really interesting. But, you know, the way she writes about Shakespeare in her letters to her second husband, Max, because when she was living in London during the war and almost at her most productive—I mean, her productivity levels are insane. And hitting every ball for six, really, you know: Towards Zero, Five Little Pigs, a couple of Westmacotts, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But she spent a lot of time going on her own to see Shakespeare.She's very—I hope I'm right in saying this—she's very sort of Ernest Jones [CB1] in her approach. She doesn't regard them so much as the products of words on a page; she regards them as rounded characters. Why were Goneril and Regan the way they were? What's wrong with Ophelia? You feel like saying, “Well, whatever Shakespeare wanted it to be,” but she sees them in that way. And Iago particularly—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —is the one that gets her. Yes. In one of her, I better not say which, but a major, major novel.And the book that she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott, The Rose and the Yew Tree, which I think might well be her best book of all. I think—well, I'll just say she wrote these six books under a pseudonym, Mary Westmacott. People call them romantic novels; that's sort of the last thing they are. And they're very, very interesting mid-20th-century human condition novels, and they're full of lots of stuff that she had to distill for the detective fiction. And she talks a lot about Iago in The Rose and the Yew Tree really interestingly, I think.Christie on Shakespeare?OLIVER: Now, Max said she should just write a book about Shakespeare, all this Shakespeare all the time. But she didn't. Why?THOMPSON: No. I don't think she ever liked being told what to do.OLIVER: [laughs]THOMPSON: His letters to her are quite annoying, aren't they?OLIVER: Yes, yes. I've only read what's in your book, but yes, I didn't warm to him.THOMPSON: I'm glad because people do. He gets a really good press even though he was unfaithful. But it worked, the marriage, because they both got what they wanted from it. But he said that, yes, and she says, “Oh no, they're just thoughts for you.” I don't think she would've felt the need, somehow. I think she liked saying things in her own more oblique way.OLIVER: Save it for the novels.THOMPSON: Yes, she's a great mistress of the indirect, I think, really. The way she writes about Macbeth in The Pale Horse, which I think is a really underrated novel, including thoughts on how it should be staged, which are really interesting and very, very good. I think she would've preferred to do that and use it to her ends.And of course, she has an incredibly powerful sense of evil, which I suppose is also in Shakespeare. Hers is a Christian sensibility, I mean, no question. People never talk about that, but it really is.OLIVER: Was she pro hanging?THOMPSON: Well, I think she took a kind of utilitarian approach that the innocent must be protected. And she took a view that if you've killed once, it becomes very easy to kill again because something in you has shifted, so you become a danger to the community. So I suppose in that sense she was.I mean, Miss Marple was. She's quite—“I really feel quite glad to think of him being hanged.”OLIVER: It's one of her most striking lines.THOMPSON: It is, isn't it?OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: So I suppose she was. I mean, I suppose she was. You know, she's very modern, she's very subtle in her thinking, but at the same time, she is a late Victorian product of her society. Yes.Dickens and Christie's FamilyOLIVER: Now, you mentioned this Bleak House script. She loved Bleak House. Do we know what she loved about it? It's obviously the first detective novel. Are there other factors?THOMPSON: You are going to know—this is when I'm going to start coming across as an idiot. Is it written before The Moonstone? Yes, of course it is.OLIVER: I think so. Yes. Yes. It's the first time there's a police detective in a major English novel.THOMPSON: Okay. I think she—do you know, this is a really good question. I don't actually know why she loved Dickens so much. She grew up—she had that rather intriguing upbringing whereby she had two much older siblings, a sister who was 11 years older, a brother who was 10 years older. Father died when she was 11.So she grew up incredibly close with a really rather intriguing mother, Clara. This is in the house at Torquay. And her mother encouraged her in a way that, it seems to me, quite unusual for the time and for the class to which she belonged. Because it was never deemed that it would interfere with her marrying and leading a more conventional life. But she always wanted to express herself creatively. And I think her mother possibly was a frustrated creative. I don't know. She had a lot of go in her.And whether it was just something she read with—I think anything she did at an early age with her mother would've made a huge impression on her. I think what you read when you're that age, you never quite—I never read Dickens at that age, so I've never quite got the habit.OLIVER: But if she's born in 1890, presumably her mother is just about old enough to have been alive when Dickens was alive. And so she's got a somewhat direct—THOMPSON: Yes, she was.OLIVER: You know, it's sort of back to the original culture of it, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes. Isn't that extraordinary?OLIVER: Yes. Yes. It's crazy to think. So she must have taken it in maybe in a more original way, somehow?THOMPSON: Possibly. Certainly Tennyson, I get that feeling, because her mother wrote this rather leaden sub-Tennysonian poetry. [laughter] It's like Tennyson on the worst day he ever had, but worse than that.OLIVER: But worse, yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And she wrote poetry like that, the mother, which is really rather sweet and touching to read. And obviously she would've been alive at the same time as Tennyson. So, yes, I'd never, ever thought of that before. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, they went to see Henry Irving.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Yes. And yet she feels—it just amazes me, this—so I'm leaping slightly here, but this 21st-century halo of cool that she has around her, Agatha Christie. [laughter] I know, it's awful in a way, but the way she can be reinterpreted—that is a bit Shakespearean, in a way.I don't mean to make extravagant claims, but there's a sort of translucent quality to what she writes that means that people can impose and pull it and twang it and know that she won't let them down, as we are seeing constantly at the moment.Art and MusicOLIVER: Yes. No, I agree. Other arts—we know about all this, she loves reading. What music did she enjoy, for example? Did she like paintings?THOMPSON: Yes, she loved paintings. She liked modern art. She was painted by Kokoschka. It's very good. And she writes about modern art. In Five Little Pigs, the painter in that is a modern artist.And then music was her grand passion. I mean, music was her original career choice, as you know, of course. She must have had a good voice. She thought she could make a career of it. And she could play the piano. Beautiful piano at Greenway, it's still there.And they used to do this thing—I think it's a lovely idea—as a family. They would fill in what they called the book of confessions, and it would be questions like, “What is your state of mind? If not yourself, who would you be?” And at the age of 63, which is the last time she filled it in, she wrote, “An opera singer.” So that was still what she would've dreamed of doing. She loved Wagner very, very deeply.OLIVER: Okay. Interesting.THOMPSON: And there's a Wagner theme in a very late book, Passenger to Frankfurt, the one that everybody hates except me. And music, I mean, as a girl when—so her voice wasn't strong enough for opera. I think her ultimate—same as I grew up wanting to be a ballet dancer, I think her ultimate would've been to sing Isolde at Covent Garden.And in some of her short stories and in her first Mary Westmacott, which is called Giant's Bread, which is about a musician—and she really inhabits this character, Vernon, and it's all about modern music. And somebody who knew about this stuff, which I don't, told me, “No, she knew. She knew what was going on. She knew about the trends.” This is in the late twenties.And she always went to Beirut, and that was her real, real, real passion. She was one of those restlessly creative people. And her mother, God bless her, encouraged it.Christie's UniquenessOLIVER: What is it that distinguishes her from the other detective fiction writers? Because she doesn't, to me, feel—she's obviously part of this whole generation, this whole golden age, whatever you want to call it, but she doesn't feel the same as them somehow.THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: What is that?THOMPSON: Do you think it's her simplicity, that distilled simplicity that she has? She doesn't write linear; she writes geometric, I always think.OLIVER: Tell me what you mean.THOMPSON: Well, if you think of a book, the one I admire the most, as I constantly go on about, which is Five Little Pigs—you think about the amount of stuff that's in that book. It's a meditation on art versus life. The solution is unbelievably intriguing, I think. There's a whole family psychodrama in there. And every move of the plot, she's also moving on a—every move of the plot is impelled by a revelation of character. So plot and character are utterly intertwined, distilled together.I don't think any of the others can do that. I think Dorothy Sayers would take twice as many pages. And she'd dot every i and cross every t, and she couldn't bear loose ends or anything, could she? And she liked to reveal her knowledge of other things, almost to—I think the others like you to know that they're a bit better than the genre, maybe. Their detectives are superhuman, almost; wish-fulfillment man, almost.She doesn't do that with Poirot. He's just pure omniscience, really, plus a few tics and traits and, you know, mustache. I think it's that distillation and simplicity and the way she inhabits the genre in a way that the others don't quite do. And at the same time, she's redefining it from within.OLIVER: There's something as well, I think, about—she gets past the kind of Sherlock Holmes model in a different way. They still all have a bit of an overreliance on that, maybe.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: Whereas Poirot in, what is it? In something like, is it Murder in the Mews? Very sort of Sherlock and Watson—THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: —kind of dynamic. But within, I don't know, two or three novels, that's gone, and he's Poirot as we know him, as it were.THOMPSON: Yes, yes.OLIVER: And she kind of, as you say, makes it her own thing and goes off in new directions.Christie and the TheaterTHOMPSON: Yes. She's sort of conceptual and the others aren't quite, I think. She doesn't do—she does something completely different with the whole concept of what a solution is, it seems to me. She doesn't—it's not Cluedo, is it? It's not, there's six of them, and eventually it has to be one of them; however many tergiversations or however you say that word, you sort of know that. Whereas with her, it's: it's nobody, or it's everybody, or it's the policeman, or it's a child, or there's something bigger and bolder going on.And she writes—I think she writes very theatrically. I think she writes scenically. I think she's incredibly good at character and action. That scene where you know the girl's a thief because Poirot leaves out 23 pairs of silk stockings, and he goes back in the room and there's 19 or something like that, tells you everything. It's all in there.OLIVER: The solution to 4.50 from Paddington, which we shan't reveal, but—THOMPSON: That's Cards on the Table. But what I mean is, she's given us a little scene that tells us all we need to know about that person, really: a sort of timid thief who can't resist—OLIVER: Yes, but that's what I'm saying. At the end of 4.50, the solution is staged.THOMPSON: Oh, sorry. Yes.OLIVER: It is literally a little re-creation of the drama, if you see what I mean.THOMPSON: Yes, I do. Sorry, Henry. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: No, no. We're crossed wires.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, yes.OLIVER: But she is very theatrical, yes.THOMPSON: No, you are absolutely right. That's a reenactment.OLIVER: Of something that was seen almost like in a—you know, the whole thing is very—THOMPSON: Yes, yes. Well, she was a great—I mean, obviously Shakespeare, but she was a great lover of the theater as a medium. And of course, she wrote plays, as we know, which I think are far weaker than her books, myself.OLIVER: Even The Mousetrap?THOMPSON: Especially. [laughter] When did you last see it? Or have you not—OLIVER: I've seen it once. I've seen it—you know, I don't know, before I had children, a long time ago. And I thought it was great. It was a lot of fun. The ending of act one, when someone opens a door and they say, “Oh, it's you.” It's very dramatic moments. You don't like it?THOMPSON: No, I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing it done really, really well. There's something strong at the heart of it, that theme that haunts a lot of her books about what happens to children who are unwanted.OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: Which is in loads of her—no, not loads. It's in Ordeal by Innocence. It's in Mrs. McGinty. That's, I think, because that happened to her mother. Her mother was given away as a child. Her own mother was a poor widow and gave up her daughter to be raised by her rich sister, which is not—it's not abandonment, but I think—OLIVER: Well, yes.THOMPSON: — it's not great. And I think all these things were absorbed by Agatha as a child. She grew up in what we would today call a house of—I hate this—strong women. I hate that “strong woman” thing, but they were strong women. Her mother was very, you know, as we've said, a sort of driving little person. And the rich grandmother, the poor sister, the dynamic there, they both fed into Miss Marple.And then her older sister, Madge, who was a big personality and actually had a play on in the West End before Agatha did, which I've always thought was extraordinary, just to write a play and have it on in the West End in 1924.And the men were—the father was feckless and charming and a rather grand New Yorker, he grew up as, and then settled in Torquay. And the brother was the Branwell Brontë. [laughter] He ended up a drug addict, which is also a type that feeds into her fiction: the man who could have made something of his life and goes wrong.The TV AdaptationsOLIVER: So all this theatricality in the books is obviously why she adapts so well to TV, and again, a lot of the others don't.THOMPSON: Yes, that's true.OLIVER: How famous would she be now without the TV adaptations?THOMPSON: Well, by 1990, so the centenary, she was a hell of a lot less—and that's really when the Poirots got going, which she never wanted. She never wanted—she didn't really want Murder on the Orient Express. It was only because it came via Lord Mountbatten. I don't know. I don't know because I think they're mostly not very good. I don't know what you think about the adaptations. But maybe that's deliberate, that they're less—if they drove you back to the books, you'd probably get quite a pleasant surprise.OLIVER: It's hard for me to say because I saw them all more or less after I'd finished reading her.THOMPSON: What did you think?OLIVER: I love Joan Aiken—not Joan Aiken, what's she called?THOMPSON: Yes, Joan Hickson is marvelous. Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Hickson. I think she's just perfect because as you say, the simplicity, the not overstating. The “Pocketful of Rye” episode where she turns up and quotes the Bible, and the vicious older sister is there, and they have that moment. It's all so cleanly done.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree.OLIVER: David Suchet, I quite like him. I think he has those wonderful moments. “I cannot eat these eggs. They are not the same.” I think that's very good. It's very funny, you know, he gets it.THOMPSON: You prefer him in spats and art deco mode to when he became—he became like a de facto member of the House of Atreus by the end, hadn't he? It had gone very, very—OLIVER: I mean, I certainly didn't watch them all, no, no.THOMPSON: No. Well, I sort of had to.OLIVER: Yes, you did.THOMPSON: But I could never get through those short story ones. I don't think I've ever got—OLIVER: The moral sort of doom of it all, yes.THOMPSON: Well, the early ones, when they always had—you could see they'd hired a car for the day. [laughter] And I don't think I've ever got to the end of one of those.But I think—sorry, going back to your question, I think they probably did make a massive difference. You know, they're really, really popular. And whether she would have—what you think her—she might be read as much as somebody like Sayers if it weren't for all those adaptations. But then the fact of all those adaptations tells its own story in a way, because that wouldn't happen to one of the others, as you rightly said.Resurgence and PopularityOLIVER: No, they don't have that quality. And also, she was bigger than them. That's why they picked her, because she was bigger than them anyway.THOMPSON: And simpler. Because when I used to read them at university between the pages of Beowulf or whatever, like porn, [laughter] it was a bit mal vu. You read her for entertainment. But you certainly—I don't think—she's always been admired by a certain kind of French intellectual, hasn't she, for that subtextual quality that she has, that sort of fathomless quality that she has.But when I researched that biography, which I started in 2003, I can remember going on the radio. And names will not be named, but I was like a figure of fun with a couple of other detective writers, quite well known, who just sort of openly mocked me for taking her seriously and more or less said, “Oh yeah, we love her, but she's terrible” kind of thing. “Why are you taking her seriously?” I mean, it was regarded as a bit of a joke to take her seriously.I'm not saying I changed the game or anything like that, but I think there must have been a movement around that time in the early twenty-naughties—whatever the damn thing, decade's called—to start seeing that she is an interplay of text and subtext, facade and undercurrents, and these powerful foundations that underpin her books. Murder on the Orient Express is, you know, “Does human justice have the right to exert itself when legal justice has let it down?”There are these very strong—I think this is part of why she's survived the way she has. We intuit powerful truths underneath the Christie construct, if you like. I always say she's not real, she's true. I think she's incredibly wise about human nature, possibly more than any of them.You take a book like Evil Under the Sun, and there's a femme fatale who's murdered. “Oh, the femme fatale. No man can resist her.” Turns out she can't resist men. She's prey; she's not a predator. And of course, women who are so dependent on their looks and so on, that is what they are. They are prey. They're not predators. They're very, very vulnerable. Just a really small thing like that. And I just think, oh, you're very—there's so much easy wisdom in there somehow.And she deploys it perhaps differently—I mean, Ruth Rendell is wise, but it's very, “I am wise and you're going to pay attention to me.” You know what I mean? It's all very, “I'm very dark and very wise and very,” you know. I love her, but everything's so easy with Agatha. It's so, to coin a phrase, two tier. You can read them and have fun with them. You can read them and there's so much stuff going on underneath, and yet she presents this smooth face. I don't think any of the others are quite that resolved, if you like.Self-AdaptationsOLIVER: Now, you wrote that her own stage adaptations of The Hollow and Five Little Pigs lack the subtlety of the original books, quote, “almost as if Agatha herself did not realize what made them such good books.” How much of her talent do you think was unconscious in that way?THOMPSON: Yes. That's such a good question. I do think that, about those plays, it could have been that she just thought, “That's not what my audiences are going to want from me. They're just going to want to be entertained by”—we know she can do the other thing because of her Mary Westmacott books, where everything is laid out. They're not distilled at all; they're quite the opposite.I think they must have been such a pleasure for her to write because she didn't have to constantly—they're unresolved; they ask questions that don't have to be answered. She could have done that with those plays, I'm sure, but I think she would've thought people aren't coming to see them for that. I think she had a very good opinion of herself, in the best possible way.OLIVER: Hmm.THOMPSON: Like I said to you earlier, she didn't take a lot of notice of anything anybody said to her. Because it is like writing this other little book, the one I've just done about 1926. She was very acclaimed right from the start. I didn't emphasize that enough in the biography. And she was really recognized as very special right from the start.And I think it's extraordinary to me how—it's so difficult for us today, isn't it? We're so at the mercy of “That won't sell, don't do that, blah, blah, blah.” She really did not just plow her own furrow, but create that furrow in a way that you can only compare with, like, Lennon and McCartney. Or whether the time was absolutely right that they let her run, they trusted her to do what she wanted, and because she had the gift of pleasing readers . . .You do really feel, although those books are very tight and taut, you do feel an instinctive ease in what she's doing, an instinctive sort of—there's a kind of liberated—which sounds perverse because they are so controlled, the books. But I always feel she's doing exactly what she wants to do because she knows what it is and she knows how to do it. Because I think, would she be amazed that you and I are having this conversation now? I don't know that she would be, really. What do you think?OLIVER: No, I agree with you. I think she had what Johnson said, the felicity of rating herself properly. I think she knew she was really good.THOMPSON: You might know he'd say it right.OLIVER: Yes. [laughs] But there's a—I think there must have been something about—I think it's in Poirot's Christmas, one of those, where someone gets killed in the night in their bedroom, and they go up. And one of the women says, “Who would've thought the old man had so much blood in him?”And the quotation just sort of occurs to—I think there's quite a lot of that in Christie, right? Things are coming up and it fits. And she's good enough to run on instinct at times.THOMPSON: That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's absolutely right. Like the way she quotes from the—yes, I love the bit when she quotes from the Book of Saul in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which is really quite a profound novel about whether—I mean, it's terribly timely—whether it's better to be run by a corrupt capitalist or to let in the radicals. And as I said in the biography, the corrupt capitalist wins on points. But then another element enters, which is what power does to people. And that's when she quotes from the Book of Saul.And it's just like you said, this—an instinctive that she—I do always feel her as an instinctive writer, even though—her notebooks are intriguing because obviously some plots she really has to work away at. And yet they feel felicitous. A coup like The ABC Murders, and she's really—that went through lots and lots of iterations. But what she'll often do is scribble down a line of dialogue, a line of “There they are.” It's the whole—it's not bullet points, which is a loathsome concept. It reminds me of a bee going from flower to flower and knowing exactly which—and she's got this gift of knowing what flowers we're going to need.I sometimes fear I overdo it. I don't want be like one of those people who's writing a PhD on, what was the thing I said on Substack, gynocracy in St. Mary Mead or whatever. It's not—I do think that's a bit overdone these days, the rummaging in the subtext, because she's an interplay. And that's why I write that chapter in the book called “English Murder,” which is about the facade, you know, “smile and smile and be a villain.” And there's nothing more interesting. There's nothing more interesting than murder among classes who are trying to cover things up.And she does that—that's at the heart of golden age murder, I suppose. And I just think she does that better than anybody because she's so all the things we've been talking about. She's so distilled, she's so simple, she's so smooth, she's so instinctive. And she's doing it the way she wanted to do it because of your wonderful Dr. Johnson quote. She knew not to take notice of other people, including her—Quick Opinions on ChristieOLIVER: Should we have—THOMPSON: Yes. Go on.OLIVER: Sorry, sorry. Should we have a quick-fire round?THOMPSON: Please.OLIVER: I will say the name first of a few of her books—THOMPSON: Oh, god.OLIVER: —and then a few other detective writers, and you will just give us your unfiltered opinion: good, bad, ugly, indifferent.THOMPSON: Okay. What fun.OLIVER: You can “nothing” them if you want to.THOMPSON: Okay. [laughter]OLIVER: Hallowe'en Party.THOMPSON: Underrated. Very interesting on sixties counterculture and the effects of societal breakdown, et cetera. What do you think?OLIVER: I think it's a real page turner. I remember reading that for the first time. I loved it. Yes. Nemesis.THOMPSON: I can't keep saying the same thing. Underrated. [laughter] Very interesting philosophy of love in that book, I think. I think it harks back to her first marriage. However badly it turns out, it's better to have experienced it. It's quite a mournful novel.OLIVER: The Mr. Quin—THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Oh, sorry.THOMPSON: No, no. Sorry. You carry on. Marvelous. So inventive, don't you think? Such a clever character.OLIVER: Why didn't she do more of him?THOMPSON: Yes, that would've been good. And she was always interested in the commedia dell'arte. She wrote poems about it as a girl. And the concept of Mr. Quin, yes, as this sort of evanescent figure who's also a moral force, isn't he really? Or—yes, I wish she'd done more. They're marvelous.OLIVER: Towards Zero.THOMPSON: Oh, top notch, don't you think?OLIVER: One of the best.THOMPSON: Yes, I agree. Frightening motive. Very Ruth Rendell.OLIVER: It's very distinct in her. I haven't read all of her novels, but it's very distinct.THOMPSON: But the plot is, again, typical of her because it redefines the word contingent. [laughs] I mean, Dorothy Sayers would be having palpitations. She's very bold and grand like that. “Oh, there's a loose end. Oh, who cares?” You know, I mean, it's so—it just drives along that book, doesn't it? Yes. But I agree with you, one of her best.OLIVER: Death on the Nile.THOMPSON: Quite moving, I think. I think it's one of those ones from the thirties that, again, is talking about love in a way that—I think it just strikes a personal note to me because she was very in love with her first husband, Archie Christie. And he did fall in love with another woman, and it did cause her extreme pain that some people said to me she never quite got over.And I feel that a little bit in that book. There's a shadow of something quite powerful in that book, I think. Again, very, very loose and lovely plot, but powerful. Would you agree? Very good on the place as well, I think, Egypt.OLIVER: I love it. I think the solution is great.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And it makes a really good film.THOMPSON: It's a great film, yes. Wonderful film.Other Mystery WritersOLIVER: Yes. Okay. A few other detective writers: Michael Innes.THOMPSON: You've got me. I haven't read him. Should I?OLIVER: Oh, I think you will like him. Yes. Try Hamlet, Revenge!THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Oh, I like it already.OLIVER: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, this is exciting. Gladys Mitchell.THOMPSON: Can't get into her.OLIVER: No.THOMPSON: What do you think? Should I try a bit harder?OLIVER: I read two. I thought they were good. I was not intrigued.THOMPSON: No, somebody told—OLIVER: The ones I read—Spotted Hemlock is a wonderful, like, wow, that's great.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay. Somebody said to me, I know she really—no, I didn't—I read it in a book that she really hadn't liked Agatha Christie, but you know, who knows? All that Detection Club rivalry, you can imagine. But okay, Spotted Hemlock—if I'm going to read one, try that, yes?OLIVER: Yes, that's a great book. Margery Allingham.THOMPSON: Kind of love her, but I never understand her plots. I always feel I'm in a bit of a fog, but she's quite a good writer. Do you think? Or what do you think?OLIVER: She's good at the fog. She's good at that sort of whirligig sense that there's a lot going on—THOMPSON: Yes, whirligig.OLIVER: —and you've got to get to the end before they do, kind of thing.THOMPSON: Also, she had a pub in her sitting room. Now, I like a woman who has a pub in their sitting room.OLIVER: [laughs] E. C. Bentley.THOMPSON: You've got me again, Henry.OLIVER: Oh, The Blotting Book mystery. You'll like this.THOMPSON: Okay. Okay.OLIVER: The other one is not so good, but you'll like that a lot.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Edmund Crispin.THOMPSON: Didn't get on with him.OLIVER: Why not?THOMPSON: Don't know. Don't know. It sounds like I don't read the men, doesn't it? Which is not the truth at all.OLIVER: I think that's fair enough, isn't it?THOMPSON: Well, I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a really good reason why women have shone so brightly in this genre. I don't know. Why didn't I—I read that one, the toyshop one [The Moving Toyshop] or whatever. I don't know. I just didn't get on with it.OLIVER: Too glib?THOMPSON: Possibly.OLIVER: Bit flippant, bit sort of funny-funny?THOMPSON: Possibly. I just couldn't quite get hold of it in some way. I don't know.OLIVER: I quite like Edmund Crispin, but I do think he's got a bit of a “he's a very clever boy” about him.THOMPSON: Maybe that's what it was. Maybe that.OLIVER: Something, yes. G. K. Chesterton.THOMPSON: I haven't read Father Brown. Oh, this is awful, isn't it? I'm starting to sound like a radical feminist by accident.OLIVER: [laughs] Maybe that's what you are, Laura. Maybe you just need to admit it. [laughs]THOMPSON: No, it does. It sounds really bad because I do really love almost all the women. I just, I don't know why I haven't read him.Christie and NostalgiaOLIVER: Was Agatha a nostalgia writer?THOMPSON: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think anyone who was a nostalgia writer would've written At Bertram's Hotel, which is an entire spin on the riff of nostalgia. Really clever. I think that's such a clever book. The way she traps us in her golden age, you know, this phantasmagoria of the re-created golden age. And then she says, “Ha, really fooled you.”I've written about this. I think she moved with the 20th century far more than is realized. I love those Cold War novels she writes about her dislike of ideologies. I love her postwar books about the fragmentation of the hierarchical society. I think she's—well, she's an incidental social historian, as are, I think, P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, but they're much more underlined about it. Again, I'm intrigued what you think. Do you think she is?OLIVER: I think there's definitely some quality, particularly to the Miss Marple stories—as you say, the social history sort of becomes a way of preserving something that's disappearing. One of them, written in the sixties—you can tell me which one—it opens with that description of all the new houses in the village and the mothers who give their children cereal for breakfast. And what sort of a thing is that to give a child? They should have bacon and eggs. Bacon and eggs is a real—you know, and she does have a real something heartfelt and real sense that this part of England is going, and this new thing is coming in.THOMPSON: That's true. That's absolutely true. That's The Mirror Crack'd. And it's—OLIVER: The Mirror, yes, yes.THOMPSON: Yes, and that whole thing of Mrs. Bantry's house has now been bought by a film star and blah, blah, blah. Yes, no, you are absolutely right. I didn't think hard enough before I answered your question.OLIVER: But no, what you said is also true. I can't sort of work out to what extent she regrets it, to what extent it's just useful material for her, you know?THOMPSON: Both. I mean, some of her late books, including Endless Night, I think, which is an incredibly modern book—that whole “me, me, me” culture of “I want, therefore I will have now,” which is written when she was quite an old lady. And then a book like Passenger to Frankfurt, which is—it's a bit sub–Brave New World, but it's very honest and pessimistic about a future—well, the one we are living in, really—full of fear and uncertainty and almost dystopian.She was a realist. You know, she is Miss Marple in a lot of ways. She was a realist in a way that I think a lot of us would find it difficult to be. And her American publishers were often—would sort of say, can she tone this down? Can she not have a young person who's completely evil? Readers want to know, is she going get any therapy? [laughter] And it's so true. There's quite a lot of that going on.She's very clear-eyed. So if she—I'm a bit nostalgic for Blur, do you know what I mean? I mean, you can't help it, in a way, like that brilliant example you give at the start of The Mirror Crack'd. But I would say her image is quite at odds with the reality of her in that way. But the image—OLIVER: And the adaptations don't help with that.THOMPSON: No. No. But at the same time, that Christie image, you know, the gentlewoman, the tea or the eternal bridge party, blah, blah, blah, that has a huge power of its own. So just being too iconoclastic about her, I think, is also a lie. Because I think, again, it's that interplay. She used the image, and the image—I hate the word cozy. I loathe the word cozy, but there's no denying that any book of that kind does have that quality. So I suppose even that's nostalgic in a way.Christie's PoshnessOLIVER: In a way, yes. How posh was she?THOMPSON: Good question. I've been thinking about that a lot. Quite, I would say. Quite grand, with that confidence. Her father really was—as I said, he was a young blade in New York dancing with Jennie Jerome and blah, blah, blah. And then it so happened that he ended up in Torquay, which of course then was very posh. And the fact that when she disappears, she disappears to Harrogate, [laughs] which is like the Torquay of the north.I remember her grandson saying to me, “She dealt with her literary agent. To her, he was staff.” You know, that kind of thing. Her sister, there is a—well, her sister ended up very grand indeed with a huge house up in Cheshire.I think she just had that internal confidence, really. She wasn't—and that there wasn't much money. I mean, there was very little money when she was growing up, as of course you know, but that didn't matter. I mean, her voice is insane. Her voice is, [affecting a posh voice] “Oh, it's lucky it just happens.” [laughter] But yes, there's a part of her that is real late Victorian upper middle class that, again, underpins her books.It's amazing really how broad-minded and cosmopolitan she was. But possibly, I mean, possibly that does—she was—you know, when she disappeared, she was described in foreign newspapers as an Anglo-American, the embodiment of Englishness, and that's how she was described. And then of course she was genuinely cosmopolitan in her love of travel and her love of other cultures and all that obvious stuff. Yes.Inspirations for Miss MarpleOLIVER: How much of her grandmothers is in Miss Marple?THOMPSON: Quite a lot, I would say, particularly the—OLIVER: Drawn from life?THOMPSON: Well, in an essential way not, because Miss Marple has no real experience of life in that way. We're occasionally told about some chap who came calling who wasn't suitable or whatever, but she's almost defined by nonexperience of life in a sense, but observation of life. She's an observer. She's not an outsider in the way that Poirot is. She has a place within the social hierarchy and whatever, and that village has a reality to it. And the way it changes has a reality to it. But she is defined by being an observer, I would say.But Margaret Miller, who was the rich grandmother, who is the one who had the big house at Ealing and was—you know, she's the one who would go to the Army and Navy stores and all that stuff that's in At Bertram's Hotel. She was—there's a lot of her in Miss—I think, as I say in the book, she grew up with the sound of female wisdom in her ears. You know, her grandmother was the sort of—if she'd seen her up in Harrogate, she would've known exactly what was going on. You know, one of those kind of women who could spot an affair at a hundred paces, just a wise sort of woman, worldly, worldly woman.And Miss Marple is worldly in her thinking, but not in her experience, particularly in a book like A Caribbean Mystery, which I think is—she's a real sophisticate, Agatha. I mean, I'm reading The Hollow again at the moment. And it's really astounding to me how there's a love affair at the center of it with a young woman who's kind of a self-portrait and this married man. And not only, there's not—it's not only nonjudgmental; there's literally no concept of judgment being in the vicinity. It's really, really sophisticated, grown-up stuff, I think. And again, I think that's maybe not recognized about her that much.Nursery RhymesOLIVER: What are the importance of nursery rhymes to her?THOMPSON: Yes, that's interesting. They're part of that distilled quality she had, I suppose, that really simple ability to catch hold of something that is simple and familiar in itself and then subvert it. There's books where she—I don't think she needs it in Five Little Pigs. I think the book is almost too good for that.But is it not to do with that—like her titles, which are really, really simple with a faint frisson of the sinister about them. Is it not that ability she has to catch, to take something really, really simple and subvert it for her own ends? What do you think? Do you think that's right? Or do you think it's something more than that?OLIVER: No, I think the simplicity is the point, and I think it probably gives her a way of talking, of showing how fundamental the wickedness is. And as you say, the children can be evil, and it's part of the darkness in a way, but it gives the appearance of innocence and, oh, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe? You know, children do this. And so it leads you through and makes it worse somehow. [laughs]THOMPSON: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. But I know I've—how many times have I said the word simple? But I really do feel that's the heart of her. And I also feel it's the heart of why she was misunderstood when I was growing up reading her because it was mistaken for simplistic.Wartime ProductivityOLIVER: Why was she so productive during the war? I mean, there were four books one year.THOMPSON: Yes.OLIVER: And as you say, they're some of the best. I mean, what is it about the war that gets her so busy?THOMPSON: Well, she was on her own, which she had never been, really. Well, obviously she divorced her first husband in 1928. So there's a couple of very bleak, dead years before she met her second husband and married him in 1930. But she wasn't completely on her own because she had her friend Charlotte Fisher, who was a sort of secretary-companion, but much more than that—really, really good friend.But in the war, Max Mallowan was abroad. Her daughter—she had one child—her daughter was married and living in Wales. And she was living in the Isokon building in North London, which I love because that's like, “You think I'm chintzy and old fashioned. And here I am socializing with the sort of left-wing intelligentsia at the Isokon building.” And there's something about being in that adorable little flat—they're so fabulous, those flats—and being alone but not feeling abandoned, as she had after her first marriage.And I suppose also, you know, war is, you either cower in despair or you think, “Right, well, better get on with it.” War is stimulating in that way. I think it was to quite a few writers, maybe, or quite a few creatives. The shadow of death. But there was something about that solitude but not abandonment, plus the stimulation of not knowing whether it was your last day on earth that did—it did. I mean, it's absolutely insane how productive she is.And then she wrote—she had a week off. She was also working as a dispenser at a London hospital, and she had a week off. And she wrote a Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring, which is one of her best Westmacotts, I think. I mean, she's got a week off and she writes a book. I mean, Jesus, there's a challenge to us, Henry. [laughter]The Mary Westmacott NovelsOLIVER: What are those Mary Westmacotts like? Because I've never read them, but you seem very—THOMPSON: Oh, have you not?OLIVER: You're very up on them. You like them?THOMPSON: I am. I really am. Well, for a biographer, they were a treasure trove because they're very revealing. Unfinished Portrait is, I think, as close as you are ever going to come to a true autobiography, as opposed to the actual autobiography, which is charmingly disingenuous.OLIVER: And also dull. No? I mean, it's just so dull.THOMPSON: Do you think? It is a bit.OLIVER: I couldn't read it. I couldn't read it. No, it was so long and so leaden. I felt like she didn't really want to tell me the story of her life. Just couldn't.THOMPSON: Well, I think that's probably right. It was very heavily edited after her death. And her daughter was very, very protective of her. So, Max Mallowan as well. So maybe there was a much better book in there somewhere. Who knows?OLIVER: So we should read Mary Westmacott if we want the unfiltered Agatha?THOMPSON: I would say Unfinished Portrait. It really fascinates me because the worst time you've ever gone through in your life—so in 1926, she lost her mother and her husband in the space of four months. And I think an awful lot of people, even writers, would think, “I'm going to put that behind me and get on.” But she had to reopen the wound. She had to go through it all again eight years later. I find that really, in itself, incredibly revealing about her.Poirot vs. MarpleOLIVER: Why is there so much more Poirot than Marple?THOMPSON: Yes, I've wondered that because there is this little thing that she hated him, which I don't really think she did. It's just something people say, isn't it?OLIVER: Well, it's a common thing about artists. They're supposed to hate their most successful work, but—THOMPSON: Yes. Yes. All I could come up with was that he was easier to put in different places. He could conceivably be on the Nile or in Mesopotamia or—I mean, it would be a—she does manage to get Miss Marple to the West Indies, but it's certainly—OLIVER: There are only so many holidays your nephew can send you on.THOMPSON: He was really successful, that nephew, wasn't he? Who do you think he was like? Sort of Ian McEwan or—OLIVER: [laughs] I know. It was sort of crazy, isn't it?THOMPSON: And very kind to her.OLIVER: It might be to her credit that she doesn't do a Midsomer Murders thing and just sort of wave away and say, “Oh, we can just have as many of these murders as we want.” She says, “No, we can only fit—” Do you think maybe that's it?THOMPSON: I think there might be a bit of that. I mean, her notebooks sort of—some of the books were originally Marples, like Cat Among the Pigeons and Death on the Nile, in fact. And then they became Poirots. I just wonder whether he's a bit more malleable because she is a more rooted, fixed entity.And he is—I don't mean to denigrate David Suchet because he's a fantastic actor, but he does root him more than I think the written version. I think he is a sketch on the page. And one of her great skills, I think, is how she can sketch, and they've got that quality of aliveness on the page, which you just can't analyze, really. I don't—well, I can't. And that's how I see Poirot. So he was more movable in that sense.And she's incredibly good at certain—like Sleeping Murder, there's no way you could have him in that. And Miss Marple is—her qualities are so perfect for a book like that, which has suddenly reminded me of how she got me into John Webster. I never read John Webster until—OLIVER: [laughs] That's great.THOMPSON: The way she uses The Duchess of Malfi is so clever. Do you think that's right about Poirot? Do you think there's something more . . .Reader Preferences and SalesOLIVER: I can see that. I wondered if there was some reader's prejudice involved.THOMPSON: Oh.OLIVER: Poirot is the sort of exotic—Sherlock Holmes, one thing that makes him popular is that he's a bit wacky, you know. And Poirot—he's always talking about, “You English are so xenophobic. Excuse me, I am Belgian.” And with the eggs and all the little—whereas Miss Marple's just the kind of old lady that we all wish there were more of. And how much of that will readers take? I don't know.THOMPSON: Yes. Although, as I say, she, she did—I mean, I think her publishers did like her to do Poirot, but I don't know that she would've been influenced by that necessarily. I mean, maybe she was—maybe I'm overdoing her—OLIVER: Well, she had these terrible money problems. Didn't she have to be a little bit focused on the dollar?THOMPSON: She did. She did, but she didn't—well, I mean, the money problems are insane because they were absolutely no fault of her own. They were to do with test cases, and it was just this sort of accumulation of horror that put her in tax problems during the war. And she really never could dig her way out of them and was advised to go bankrupt twice, which is unbelievable, just as a way of clearing it. I mean, it's terrible.But I don't know that she—I think her attitude was a bit more, “Well, why should I even bother if they're just going to take it away from me?” In 1948 she didn't write anything at all because I think she thought, “What's the point?” But then, that wasn't her way. But I don't know that she thought of writing as a way of digging out of it necessarily. But I could be—OLIVER: The Marples, did they make less money? Were they, did they sell less?THOMPSON: Not really. I think they all sold. Even poor old Passenger to Frankfurt sold hugely, absolutely hugely. I think people—I mean, my parents would—it was like people just wanted them, the Christie for Christmas.Rereading ChristieOLIVER: How many times have you read these books? Do you ever get bored?THOMPSON: No.OLIVER: Really?THOMPSON: Well, I have them on rotation, and I don't—as you know, I do interleave them with our beloved Elizabeth Bowen, who's my passion at the moment, and other people. But they are consolatory, I suppose. They are—there's bits of—there is this kind of—there's bits of them that I just know completely off by heart, like the gramophone record in And Then There Were None and all that.But there's something—and maybe I should have said this earlier, when I say—I've said it on Substack—that they're fairy tales for adults. There's something about that. There's an almost physical sensation of pleasure, really, when the resolution comes. It is a bit like act five of Shakespeare. I'm not going to say she's quite on that level. Not even I am going to say that.But there is—and it is like being a child again and reading the end toward the happy-ever-after, even though her happy-ever-afters are sometimes compromised. And there is something almost primal in that pleasure. And it almost sounds borderline mad, me saying it like that, but I do think there's something in it because the resolution is so—because it's character based, and at her best, she's character and plot as one, as in Five Little Pigs or The Hollow or Murder on the Orient Express or blah, blah, blah.Her resolutions do tell you something about human nature. You do think, “Oh, yes, that is what that would be. Yes, it would be all about money. Yes. Yes, doctors are untrustworthy,” or something on a more profound level than that. There's something that is a satisfaction, both childlike and I'm experiencing it as an adult. In my defense, P. G. Wodehouse said you can never read them too many times. [laughs] It doesn't matter if you know who did it. There's so much pleasure in them.Thompson's CareerOLIVER: Now, I want to ask a little bit about your career.THOMPSON: Mm-hmm.OLIVER: You were at a sort of stage school, then you studied at Merton, and then you worked at The Times.THOMPSON: Yes. Very briefly. Yes.OLIVER: How does one therefore go from all of this to being the biographer?THOMPSON: Well, I did always think I would have a career in—I wanted to direct plays. I directed Hamlet after university, which is probably the thing I'm still proudest of. But what it was, was that I wrote a couple of books. I won an award when I was quite young.And then I had an agent who—I said to him, “I want to write a biography of Nancy Mitford.” And he wasn't very keen on the idea, but I must have written an okay proposal. Again, because I thought Nancy Mitford was a little bit undervalued, that she's a lot more than just a posh girl. And at the time her reputation was quite low. And so somebody bought into that idea, and it sort of went from there, really.But it's a bit—I sometimes look back at the books I've written, including a memoir of my publican grandmother, and I think, gosh, this is all quite scatter-gun, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you should just write the books you really want to write. But it was a passion for Nancy Mitford that sort of started that particular ball rolling.And then I had the idea of—oh, no. I was down in Devon with a boyfriend, and he said, “You never stop talking about Agatha Christie. Why don't you try and write her biography?” And that was just a luck of timing because her daughter was still alive. So I met her, and she liked me because I knew the Mary Westmacotts so well, and that sort of happened. I mean, quite often these things are very fortuitous, don't you think? Did you not find that with your book?OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, I did. I did. I think some writers, as you say—I don't think of it as scatter-gun. I think of it, it's sort of an emergent thing, and you happen to have these different interests, and you just follow your nose, and that's fine.THOMPSON: Yes, exactly.OLIVER: Tell us about this production of Hamlet.THOMPSON: Oh. Do you know, I think it was not bad. I had a very good Hamlet. I think if you've—well, you're in trouble without—who is now quite a successful actor. And we were all really young, but he was—I saw him in something and said, “Do you want to play Hamlet for me?” And he said, “Okay then.” And it was a room above a pub in Chelsea, and it was very spare and very quick.And it was about—I can't bear when people overanalyze the character of Hamlet, and why does he delay? He delays because Shakespeare wants him to, so that he can write all those incredible speeches. That's a bit simplified, but it was—he was so, he so understood the translucent power of those soliloquies, this actor. So it just sort of worked because we didn't do too much to it. And it was, yes, it was good. I think it was good. But then I did Macbeth, and that was much less good.Secretly Reading ChristieOLIVER: And you've said here, and I think you said it in your book, that when you were at Merton, you were reading Agatha Christie between the covers of what you were supposed to be reading.THOMPSON: Yes, yes, I was.OLIVER: That can't be—is that a slight exaggeration, or did you really not get on with the syllabus?THOMPSON: Well, hang on. I was a bit stuck in the first term. Can you imagine coming from a performing arts school—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —and then being told, “Read that bloody, you know.OLIVER: Yes, yes. No, it's intense.THOMPSON: All I knew was French. How I got in is a minor mystery, but there it was. I've tried to do it honor ever since by writing as best books I possibly can. But I was okay once I got over that bit. Once I got into my beloved Tennyson and all the people we've been talking about, Hardy and blah, blah, blah. Larkin, about whom the best thing I've ever read—the best thing I've ever read about Larkin is your Substack about him, without a shadow of a doubt.OLIVER: Oh, thank you.THOMPSON: Just wonderful. So I sort of winged it a bit, but I had a very nice don. And the autodidact side of me, which is very like Agatha Christie, who barely went to school, and Nancy Mitford—I think it can be a good thing in a way, because you have such a respect for learning and truth. I always try to be truthful in my biographies, which as we know, not everybody is. [laughter]And I think you carry on wanting to learn and carry on wanting to fill all the gaps because I only had half an education, because in the morning you would do ballet and drama and all that kind of thing. So it is a bit odd, but in some ways I think it's been a good thing.OLIVER: Now, the new book is about the 1926 disappearance. When can we expect it to be published?THOMPSON: It's only a short book—OLIVER: Yes.THOMPSON: —because obviously I covered it a lot in the biography, and it doesn't—but I have found out a couple of new things. And that will be out in August here and in November in America. And I have come up with a slightly different slant on it, but mainly—and I treat it a little bit like a cold case. And it was—I had to write—I wrote it in five weeks, but it was incredibly good fun. Oh, and I reenacted her journey, which was very interesting, to Harrogate.But mainly it's such a pleasure because I, you know, on Substack, and I think, “Oh, you can't write about Agatha Christie again.” There always seems to be quite a lot to say. I'm intrigued by how you, who I think of as a true intellectual, how you have clear regard for her.Henry on Agatha ChristieOLIVER: I started reading her when I was about 12, and I just thought she was great, and I went through most of them. But I read them at intervals. So I was reading her into my twenties, thirties. And before this interview I tried to—I thought, “Laura's always saying Five Little Pigs is the best one. I'm going to read it.” And I just sort of found that I've lost the taste, in a way.THOMPSON: Okay.OLIVER: Which I was quite, I don't know, just maybe—I feel like this is my failing. Maybe I should take a week off and sit by the pool and read it properly. But I've always thought she's really, really great, and very few people can do that many very compelling stories without you sort of thinking, “Oh, I've read this one. I know. Yes. It's the same as the other one, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it was the”—as you say, it's not Cluedo. Even Dorothy L. Sayers, I don't think I could read much more by her, frankly. Great, she's great, but it's enough. [laughs]THOMPSON: Well, I quite like her. The whole—most girls who went to Oxford are quite keen on Gaudy Night, and the character of Harriet Vane is quite satisfying, I think.OLIVER: Indeed, indeed. And Strong Poison is great. And there—but I just mean if she'd written as many books as Agatha, you can't imagine it would've sustained the level of quality.THOMPSON: No, no. There is that lightness in Agatha and that terrible cliché of, “I wrote a long book because it was too—I didn't have enough time to write a short book,” and all that kind of thing. The brevity amazes me. When I said at the start, most writers would take twice as many pages to get all that in.She has style—I don't know if you can call it a style, but there is something blindingly effective about it that nobody can imitate. And it does—there's something so fathomless about her, and that's what continues to compel me. But I think it's very lovely of you to do this if you are no longer an admirer because you've let me sort of—OLIVER: Well, it's not that I'm not an admirer. It's just that I don't—I had this with P. G. Wodehouse. I read quite a lot of it, and now, I don't know, somehow I've reached a point where it's—I sort of get it, but it's just not that funny anymore. I don't know, just need some time away.THOMPSON: Well, maybe. Maybe, but you know, I'm a bit—she's part of my life now. It's like if somebody said, “You can't read her anymore,” it would be like, “You can't listen to the Rolling Stones anymore.” I mean, it'd be like a kind of death. She's part of my life the same way they're part of my life. She's now inseparable from just the way I go on, as is Shakespeare. And if I had to lose one of them, trust me, it would be her, you'll be reassured to know. [laughter]OLIVER: Very good. Laura, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much.THOMPSON: Oh, I've really enjoyed it. I really have. And I was really looking forward to it, and it's been even nicer than I thought it would be. So thank you.OLIVER: Oh, it's been delightful.THOMPSON: Thank you so much, Henry.OLIVER: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast and one of our "best of" episodes from the vault! Due to the busyness of the holiday season, we thought this would be the perfect time to bring you a replay from our archives instead of starting a brand new book discussion series. This week, we re-air the inaugural episode of The Literary Life, in which Cindy and Angelina introduce the podcast and what they mean when they talk about having a "literary life." Each of them share how stories have shaped their personal lives, as well as how they believe stories have the power to shape culture. You can find and listen to the other 3 introductory episodes of The Literary Life mentioned in this replay at the links below- Episode 2: The Interview Episode Episode 3: The Importance of Detective Fiction Episode 4: Gaudy Night, Ch. 1-3 Happening now–the House of Humane Letters Christmas sale! Head over to the website to peruse the discounted webinars and mini-classes on sale, already discounted, no coupon code needed. Don't forget to check out this coming year's annual Literary Life Online Conference, happening January 23-30, 2026, "The Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Quickeneth: Reading Like a Human". Our speakers will be Dr. Jason Baxter, Jenn Rogers, Dr. Anne Phillips, and, of course, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks. Finally, you can also sign up now for upcoming classes like "Abiding in the Fields: Spenser, Milton, and the Pastoral Poetic Tradition" taught by Dr. Anne Phillips, or Dr. Michael Drought's "Viking and Old Norse Culture." For the full show notes of this episode, including quotes, book links, and this week's poem, please visit https://theliterary.life/306. 

Caroline goes deep on Dorothy L. Sayers' 1935 masterpiece. At 18:58, there is a brief mention of attempted suicide. Books mentioned in this episode: — Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers — Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers — Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers — Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers — Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers — Lord Peter Wimsey Investigates series by Jill Paton Walsh Related Shedunnit episodes: — The Advertising Adventures of Dorothy L. Sayers — Dorothy L Sayers Solves Her Mystery — The Challenge Of Dorothy L. Sayers Support the podcast by joining the Shedunnit Book Club and get extra Shedunnit episodes every month plus access to the monthly reading discussions and community: shedunnitbookclub.com/join. NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/ongaudynighttranscript. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reading the mysteries of the past 100 years. Books mentioned in this episode: — 1925: The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode — 1935: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers — 1945: Coroner's Pidgin by Margery Allingham (also published as: Pearls Before Swine) — 1955: Tour de Force by Christianna Brand — 1965: At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie — 1975: Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters — 1985: B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton — 1995: The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid — 2005: Still Life by Louise Penny — 2015: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins — 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie Related Shedunnit episodes: — Whodunnit Centenary: 1924 — The Shedunnit Centenary — A Century of Whodunnits — A Second Century of Whodunnits Support the podcast by joining the Shedunnit Book Club and get extra Shedunnit episodes every month plus access to the monthly reading discussions and community: shedunnitbookclub.com/join. NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/whodunnitcentenary1925transcript. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to The Literary Life podcast and our series on J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter: Book 1. After sharing some thoughts on detective fiction as it relates to Rowling, our hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks discuss chapters 8-12. Some of the ideas they share are the following: Homeric echos and classical allusions in this book, the identity quest, the significance of characters' names, the four houses and the bestiary, the three parts of the soul, the Christian influence on Rowling's stories. Angelina also seeks to teach something about symbolism and structure of literature and art as seen through the Harry Potter books. Visit HouseofHumaneLetters.com for updates on classes with Angelina, Thomas, and other members of their teaching team. Previous episodes mentioned in this podcast: The Importance of the Detective Novel (Episode 3/174) Series on Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers (Episodes 4-8) Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (Episode 79) Commonplace Quotes: The wise man combines the pleasures of the senses and the pleasures of the spirit in such a way as to increase the satisfaction he gets from both. W. Somerset Maugham, from The Narrow Corner For it is through symbols that man finds his way out of his particular situation and “opens himself” to the general and the Universal. Symbols awaken individual experience and transmute it into a spiritual act, into metaphysical comprehension of the world. Mircea Eliade, from The Sacred and the Profane The Fairies By William Allingham Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen,We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men;Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together;Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather!Down along the rocky shore Some make their home,They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam;Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake,With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake.High on the hill-top The old King sits;He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits.With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses,On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses;Or going up with music On cold starry nightsTo sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights.They stole little Bridget For seven years long;When she came down again Her friends were all gone.They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow,They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow.They have kept her ever since Deep within the lake,On a bed of flag-leaves, Watching till she wake.By the craggy hill-side, Through the mosses bare,They have planted thorn-trees For pleasure here and there.If any man so daring As dig them up in spite,He shall find their sharpest thorns In his bed at night.Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen,We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men;Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together;Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! Book List: Cormoran Strike Series by Robert Galbraith Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco Agatha Christie Margery Allingham Ngaio Marsh Fanny Burney Northrop Frye The Odyssey by Homer Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J. K. Rowling The Book of Beasts trans. by T. H. White The Once and Future King by T. H. White Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts by Woody Allen Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Charlie and Liz Fenwick (The Secret Shore) discuss the women cartographers who were fundamental in the Allies winning the Second World War and the way women at university at the time had to choose between their career and having a family. We also discuss Liz's love of Cornwall, her use of Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night, and we go back a few times to the people who were involved in the secret flotillas that preceded the Normandy landings. A transcript is available on my site General references: My previous interview with Liz is episode 35 Liz's TikTok plot walk on Frenchman's Creek The Woman's Hour episode including women's intuition Books mentioned by name or extensively: Daphne Du Maurier: Frenchman's Creek Dorothy Sayers: Gaudy Night Ernie Pyle: The Best Of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches Liz Fenwick: A Cornish Stranger Liz Fenwick: The Returning Tide Liz Fenwick: The Path To The Sea Liz Fenwick: The River Between Us Liz Fenwick: The Secret Shore Liz Fenwick: A Portrait Of You Buy the books: UK || USA Release details: recorded 25th March 2024; published 24th June 2024 Where to find Liz online: Website || Twitter || Facebook || Instagram || TikTok Where to find Charlie online: Website || Twitter || Instagram || TikTok Discussions 01:45 You'd wanted to write about the secret flotillas for a long time? 02:58 Women's work in cartography in the Second World War 05:48 Furthering this discussion we go to Liz's character, Merry, or Dr Tremayne, and begin a discussion on what Liz left out of this book 09:42 More about Merry's work in the context of how a woman had to choose between a career and having a family, particularly in the context of Oxford University 16:06 Merry's mother, Elise, including her story in The Secret Shore 19:46 The romance in the book, including the love story 23:00 Liz's love and use in her novels of Frenchman's Creek, Cornwall 25:06 Ridifarne! 27:01 Is heart or head more important? 28:16 Liz's use of Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night and the character of Peter Wimsey 31:19 The real people in the book and how Liz made it all happen 33:38 All about Maurice Cohen and the mouse 35:22 The sacred wells in Cornwall 38:14 All about Liz's plot walks, which she releases to TikTok 41:03 Does it feel strange when you're not writing about Cornwall? 44:10 Liz's next book, A Portrait Of You Disclosure: If you buy books linked to my site, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

fWotD Episode 2471: Dorothy L. Sayers Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.The featured article for Friday, 9 February 2024 is Dorothy L. Sayers.Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) 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? 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 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 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 Christ, 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 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.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:03 UTC on Friday, 9 February 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Dorothy L. Sayers on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Olivia Neural.

Renée read her first detective novel in the 1930s. She hasn't stopped since. This archive episode of Shedunnit (my personal favourite of all the ones I've ever made) was first published on 2nd September 2020. You can read Renée's obituary here. Her crime novels, The Wild Card and Blood Matters, are available from all good booksellers. Become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club and get bonus audio, listen to ad free episodes and join a book-loving community at shedunnitshow.com/bookclub. Books and sources: —These Two Hands by Renée —Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers —Wednesday to come by Renée —Setting the table by Renée —An interview with Renée from 2017 on RNZ To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/lifelongfantranscript. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Dark Academia trends inspired by Donna Tartt's “The Secret History” to other campus novels like Kingsley Amis' “Lucky Jim” and Philip Roth's “The Human Stain,” we delve into the quirks, challenges, and intrigues of university professor characters and campus settings for this week's mini. We also touch on classics like Dorothy L. Sayers' “Gaudy Night” and Mary McCarthy's “The Groves of Academe,” among others. Discussed: Donna Tartt: “The Secret History"Podcast Recommendation: "Once Upon a Time at Bennington College"Kingsley Amis: "Lucky Jim"Michael Chabon: "Wonder Boys"John Edward Williams: "Stoner"Dorothy Sayers: "Gaudy Night" (part of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels)Mary McCarthy: Book Mentioned: "The Groves of Academe"David Lodge: Campus Trilogy: "Changing Places,” "Small World", and "Work"“American Vandal”For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit. Follow Kim on twitter @kaskew. Sign up for our newsletter: LostLadiesofLit.com Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast

A lecture given at the Spring 2023 Regional Convivium by Dr. Kathryn Wagner entitled “Intellectual Friendship and Academic Vocation in The Place of the Lion, Gaudy Night, and That Hideous Strength.” Dr. Wagner is a scholar of medieval English literature and current Director of Academic Programming at the Center for Christianity and Scholarship at Duke University. This talk develops a contrast and convergence of intellectual conviviality in the work of Dorothy Sayers and C. S. Lewis.

In this episode, we are joined by Harriet's partner, Michael, and read chapters 16 to 21 of Emma. We talk about the mystery plots, Emma's fantasies, Emma and Mr Knightley's interactions, and Harriet's encounter with Mr Martin (which had us revisiting the map of Highbury).The character we discuss is Miss Bates, and then Michael talks about army widows and orphans. In the popular culture section, Harriet talks about the 2009 BBC adaptation of Emma.Things we mention:General discussion:John Mullan, What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (2012)Map of Highbury, created by Professor Penny Gay of the University of Sydney, and reproduced with her permission. The map was drawn in the 1980s and published in Penny Gay's work Jane Austen's Emma (Horizon Studies in Literature) Sydney University Press, 1995. More information about it is available in ‘A Hypothetical Map of Highbury‘, Persuasions Online, Volume 36, No. 1, Winter 2015.Character discussion:Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1853)Agatha Christie's books and stories featuring Miss MarpleLucy F. March Phillipps, My life and what shall I do with it? By an old maid (1918)Mary Russell Mitford, Letter to W.W. Ogbourn (April 3, 1815) – read the extract about Jane AustenDorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)Popular culture discussion:Main version considered:BBC, Emma (2009) – starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee MillerOther versions mentionedBBC, Emma (1972) – starring Doran Godwin and John CarsonMiramax, Emma (1996) – starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy NorthamITV, Emma (1996) – starring Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong For a list of music used, see this episode on our website.  

Welcome to this episode in our “Best of The Literary Life Podcast” series, this time replaying our very first episode! In this inaugural episode, Cindy and Angelina introduce the podcast and what they mean when they talk about having a “literary life.” Each of them share how stories have shaped their personal lives, as well as how they believe stories have the power to shape culture. You can find and listen to the other 3 introductory episodes of The Literary Life mentioned in this replay at the links below- Episode 2: The Interview Episode Episode 3: The Importance of Detective Fiction Episode 4: Gaudy Night, Ch. 1-3 Although the online conference mentioned at the end of this episode has long since come and gone, you can still purchase the replay at HouseofHumaneLetters.com. Commonplace Quotes: The first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before. C. S. Lewis The storyteller is one speaking out of memory, out of more than memory, speaking out of a trust left to the memory of the one speaking. Padraic Colum The Truisms by Louis MacNeice His father gave him a box of truisms Shaped like a coffin, then his father died; The truisms remained on the mantlepiece As wooden as the play box they had been packed in Or that his father skulked inside. Then he left home, left the truisms behind him Still on the mantlepiece, met love, met war, Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal, Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house He could not remember seeing before. And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from And something told him the way to behave. He raised his hand and blessed his home; The truisms flew and perched on his shoulders And a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave. Book List: An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis The Stone of Victory and Other Tales by Padriac Colum Stratford Caldecott Essay on Man by Alexander Pope For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay Elizabeth Gaskell Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Joseph Pieper Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also! Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Should detective fiction be easy reading? Thanks to my guest, Eric Sandberg. He is an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong and the editor of Dorothy L. Sayers: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction. Get tickets to see Shedunnit live on 11th September 2022 in Torquay at shedunnitshow.com/events. Mentioned in this episode: — Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers — The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins — The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins — Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers — “The Case of Miss Dorothy Sayers” by Q. D. Leavis in Scrutiny (December 1937) — Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers — “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” by Edmund Wilson in The New Yorker (20 June 1945) — The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers — The “Happily Ever After” episode of Shedunnit — The “Dorothy's Secret” episode of Shedunnit — The “Dorothy L. Sayers Solves Her Mystery” episode of Shedunnit — The “Detection Club” episode of Shedunnit NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. Thanks to today's sponsor: — Backblaze, astonishingly easy cloud storage and backup tools. Shedunnit listeners can get a 15-day no credit card required trial at backblaze.com/shedunnit To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/thechallengeofdorothylsayerstranscript Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details.

Gaudy Night - Dorothy L Sayers Harriet Vane has never dared to return to her old Oxford college. Now, despite her scandalous life, she has been summoned back . . . When she attends her Oxford reunion, known as the 'Gaudy,' at sedate Shrewsbury College, the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obsentities, burnt effigies and poison-pen letters—including one that says, "Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup." Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. Harriet realises that she is not the only target of this murderous malice as she finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection—and those of her paramour, Lord Peter Wimsey. 5 episodes adapted by Michael Bakewell, directed by Enyd Williams. CAST: Lord Peter Wimsey:  Ian  Carmichael Harriet Vane:             Joanna David Other Cast Members: (Will post when I find the information) First Broadcast: BBC Radio 7 on 18 June 2010 Episode 1 Posh sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey probes a poison-pen campaign at Oxford University. Episode 2 After being victimised, Harriet Vane returns to her old college to find out who's behind the hate campaign. Episode 3 Upper-crust sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey joins Harriet to help unravel the Oxford mystery. Episode 4 Love, jealousy and revenge complicate matters as Harriet and Lord Peter Wimsey close in. Episode 5 Questions galore for Lord Peter Wimsey - most about the case, but one very personal --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ang189/support

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

Today is the day to share my favorite mystery novel of all time, Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. Featuring the witty and erudite detective Lord Peter Wimsey and his love interest Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night is a classic mystery from the golden age of detective fiction. Affiliate link to Bookshop.org: Gaudy Night

Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of full cast BBC Radio drama adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1973 and 1983, with a further adaptation of Gaudy Night mounted for BBC Audiobooks in 2005 to complete the full sequence of Sayers' novels, all starring Ian Carmichael in the title role. .... This is by far my favorite of the series .... I highly recommend you go to this website to read more about this most interesting stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Five Red Herrings - Wikipedia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diamond Dagger award-winning crime novelist and president of the Detection Club Martin Edwards and Richard Reynolds, crime buyer for Heffers Bookshop and member of the Crime Writers' Association, lead our investigation in this month's literary podcast. Together with the Slightly Foxed team, they take a magnifying glass to the Golden Age of crime fiction, tracing its origins to the interwar years when the Detection Club was founded and discussing why the genre continues to thrill. From relishing The Poisoned Chocolates Case and resurrecting Death of a Bookseller to the mystery of E. C. R. Lorac's missing manuscript and meeting Baroness Orczy's Teahouse Detective, the plot twists and turns as we collect British Library Crime Classics and celebrate Crime Queens Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey and others along the way. Whether enjoyed as well-crafted puzzles, social documents or guilty pleasures, detective fiction is laced with nostalgia as well as cyanide. To tie up loose ends, we finish with a visit to Agatha Christie's holiday home, Greenway, a house fit for Hercule Poirot, and the setting of a Devonshire murder hunt in Dead Man's Folly. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 44 minutes; 56 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Mortmain Hall and The Crooked Shore, Martin Edwards The Murder at the Vicarage, Agatha Christie (3.57) The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers. (4.29) The Red House Mystery, A. A. Milne (9.31) The Old Man in the Corner, Baroness Orczy (10.34) A Question of Proof, Nicholas Blake (12:09) The Cask, Freeman Wills Crofts (14.02) Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers (15:00) Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie (15.39) Francis Vivian's Inspector Knollis Mysteries, published by Dean Street Press (15:58) Tragedy at Law, Cyril Hare (16:53) Thrones, Dominations, Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (18.03) Anthony Gilbert's Arthur Crook novels (19.09) Portrait of a Murderer, Anne Meredith (19.38) Bloodshed in Bayswater, John Rowland is out of print (21.38) Death of a Bookseller, Bernard J. Farmer is due to be published in a British Library Crime Classics edition in 2022 (21:41) A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries and Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries, Ed. Martin Edwards (22:35) Two-Way Murder, E. C. L. Lorac (33.40) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (35.15) Verdict of Twelve, Raymond Postgate (35.25) And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (35.57) Arrest the Bishop, Winifred Peck, published by Dean Street Press (37.56) The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Anthony Berkeley (38.42) The Dry, Jane Harper (40.05) Agatha Christie: A Biography, Janet Morgan (41.03) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Murder Most Civilized, Emma Hogan on Agatha Christie, the Miss Marple books, Issue 17 Vane Hopes, Victoria Neumark on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, Issue 32 Hauntings, Michèle Roberts on Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, Issue 63 A Gentleman on the Case, Brandon Robshaw on Margery Allingham, the Albert Campion novels, Issue 52 The Judge's Progress, P. D. James on Cyril Hare, Tragedy at Law, Issue 12 Lost in the Fens, Julie Welch on the detective stories of Edmund Crispin, Issue 63 Other Links British Library Crime Classics (22:36) Dean Street Press (30:40) Download Heffers Crime Fiction Top 100, selected by Richard Reynolds. NB The file will download automatically on click. Please check your downloads folder (35:12) Agatha Christie's holiday home, Greenway, in Devon (42:37) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

It's disorienting to read the tenth book in a longrunning detective fiction series without reading any of the books that came before, but Gaudy Night is noteworthy because its heroine Harriet Vane is a precursor to many many women found in today's mystery novels. Just come prepared for the romantic parts and the parts about English high society that all make it take longer to figure out who did the crimes.Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

It's disorienting to read the tenth book in a longrunning detective fiction series without reading any of the books that came before, but Gaudy Night is noteworthy because its heroine Harriet Vane is a precursor to many many women found in today's mystery novels. Just come prepared for the romantic parts and the parts about English high society that all make it take longer to figure out who did the crimes.Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.

 In this episode, we read Chapters 26 to 31 of Sense and Sensibility. We talk about how unsatisfying Ellen found several of these chapters, the role of gossip, the similarity between Elinor's and Marianne's situations, the importance of reputation, and whether the turnaround in our perception of Mrs Jennings was planned for by Jane Austen. We discuss the character of Marianne, then Harriet's partner, Michael, talks about duelling in Regency England. Harriet talks about how the adaptations present these sections, and how the modernisations update the Willoughby-Colonel Brandon-Marianne stories. Things we mention: References: Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (1997) Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935) – it is in this book that Lord Peter Wimsey comments on duelling with pistols rather than swords The Regency novels of Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) Adaptations of the book: BBC, Sense and Sensibility (1971) – starring Joanna David and Ciaran Madden (4 episodes)BBC, Sense and Sensibility (1981) – starring Irene Richard and Tracey Childs (7 episodes)Columbia Pictures, Sense and Sensibility (1995) – starring Emma Thompson and Kate WinsletBBC, Sense and Sensibility (2008) – starring Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield (3 episodes) Modernisations of the book: Sri Surya Films, Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000) – starring Tabu and Aishwarya RaiMGM, Material Girls (2006) – starring Hilary Duff and Haylie DuffMWM Studios, From Prada to Nada (2011) – starring Camilla Belle and Alexa PenaVegaSilver Peak Productions, Scents and Sensibility (2011) – starring Ashley Williams and Marla SokoloffJoanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility (The Austen Project #1) (2013)YouTube, Elinor and Marianne Take Barton (2014) – starring Abi Davies and Bonita Trigg  Creative commons music used:  Extract from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata No. 12 in F Major, ii. Adagio. Extract from Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata No. 38. Performance by Ivan Ilić, recorded in Manchester in December, 2006. File originally from IMSLP.Extract from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata No. 13 in B-Flat Major, iii. Allegretto Grazioso. File originally from Musopen.Extract from George Frideric Handel, Suite I, No. 2 in F Major, ii. Allegro. File originally from Musopen. Extract from 

Can a detective novel without a grisly murder be any good? If Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers is any indication: Yes! In this episode, Dr. Crystal Downing—an expert on Sayers—sits down with Dr. David C. Downing and Producer Aaron Hill to discuss one of Sayers most unique, and perhaps best, novels. Crystal unravels the threads that make Gaudy Night such a witty, deep, and insightful story. What is Sayers saying in this subversive novel about the role of women in modern society as well as marriage, community, and the world of academia?

S2 Ep 7: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Wearing a stylish pair of dungaree shorts on a sunny Spring-like Saturday afternoon, Charles Adrian reflects, digressively and at length, on some of his reasons for starting the podcast in the first place and indulges in some Vladimir Nabokov.   NB: The two stories discussed from Vladimir Nabokov’s Collected Stories are An Affair Of Honour (translated from Russian by Vladimir Nabokov) and The Aurelian (translated from Russian by Vladimir Nabokov and Peter Pertzov).   Pedants corner: Oxford, being in possession of a cathedral, is, of course, a city rather than a town. You can read more about the city of Oxford on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford   Correction: Much of what Charles Adrian says about Vladimir Nabokov and his family in this episode is not quite right. You can read more (and more accurately, one assumes) about Vladimir Nabokov’s life and ancestry on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov   Books discussed here are featured in Page One 23 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-1#/23-jessie-greengrass/), Page One 25 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-1#/25-michael-caines/), Page One 26 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-1#/26-gary-merry/) and Page One 43 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-1#/43-war/).   Other books by Vladimir Nabokov discussed on the podcast are Lolita (discussed in Page One 71 http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-2#/71-francesca-beard/) and Pale Fire (discussed in Page One 119 http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season4#/119-katherine-leedale/ and in Page One 151 http://www.pageonepodcast.com/#/151-tim-spooner/ – and particularly in the unedited version of the latter episode).   Episode image is a detail of a photograph taken by Charles Adrian.   Episode recorded: 4th April, 2020.   More information and a transcript of this episode is at http://www.pageonepodcast.com/   Book listing: Books As History by David Pearson (Page One 25) Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (Page One 23) Collected Stories by Vladimir Nabokov (Page One 25) Cosmos by Carl Sagan (Page One 26 and Page One 43)

This week we conclude Gaudy Night, also have Navy Lark, I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and we'll look at Weber in The Making Of Music.

This week we almost lost the episode.  I'm thrilled to write that dropbox stores files so thank God for them.  Anyhow we've added a new series of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again this week.  But we start with Navy Lark and the episode seeing Red from September 24 1967 then we listen to The Making of Music where we continue to study bethoven by looking at one of his best symphonies.  Then as promised we go to April 23 1967 to see the prunes where their story this week is Knights of the Round Table perhaps a bit of Holy Grail's infancy in there.  We conclude with Part 3 of Gaudy Night and this I can tell you.  Lord Peter is back from Rome.  Enjoy.  Remember to email us at brunchwiththebrits@gmail.com and send voice messages to producerdirectormaria@gmail.com enjoy

We've returned.  With everything crazy going on about you in the world, we thought some good old fashioned brunch was just the thing you needed.  We continue Navy Lark with Computerizing learn about bethoven in the Making of Music, then continue with episode 2 of Gaudy Night.  Please enjoy.  There is a new microphone for you to endure.  Please send us your quarantine stories at brunchwiththebrits@gmail.com or a voice recording to producerdirectormaria@gmail.com

John J. Miller is joined by Francesca Wade to discuss Dorothy L. Sayers's 'Gaudy Night.'

In the first episode we discuss about the genre of Detective Fiction. How it began, how it progressed and how the pioneers of this genre came to be. Panel - Yash Kuwade, Jairanjan Sharma and Shubhi Verma. Produced By - Yash Kuwade, Nikhil Mamnani Special Thanks to Media Centre IIT Kanpur. Check out our Soundcloud- https://soundcloud.com/user-925805333 Book Club's Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BookClub.IIT... As promised, here are some reading recommendations to get you started on Detective Fiction - 1. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 2. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler 3. Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman 4. Peril at End House by Agatha Christie 5. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

This episode of Recently Returned is from our Live with the Librarians series. Initially broadcast live via our Facebook page on December 6, 2019, host Anita is joined by Librarians Anu, Jess, and Lachlan to discuss some of the books they’ve been reading, and what they're looking forward to next. Titles discussed (in order of mention): Lachlan Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power Bone China by Laura Purcell ebook Melmoth by Sarah Perry eaudio Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers A Dark Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine Ghostland by Edward Parnell eaudio The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley ebook eaudio Jess Toil and Trouble - Augusten Boroughs Braving the Wilderness - Brene Brown ebook Every Heart a Doorway - Seanan McGuire Anu The Green Road by Anne Enright The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Adichie ebook Don’t Stop Believing: A Memoir by Olivia Newton-John ebook eaudio I Am Change by Suzy Zail ebook Also mentioned: We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Adichie ebook Running with Scissors by Augusten Boroughs The Haunting of Hill Houseby Shirley Jackson Becomingby Michelle Obama ebook eaudio Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Heart by Brene Brown ebook eaudio A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine Peter Wimsey Mysteries (series) by Dorothy L Sayers Have His Carcaseby Dorothy L Sayers The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers The Weekend by Charlotte Wood ebook eaudio The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood ebook Download the Live with the Librarians episode transcript

There have been only a few elections in US history in which a presidential candidate won the election without winning the popular vote. The 2016 election was one of those times, and that, combined with the 2020 election coming up, has reignited the debate about the significance of the Electoral College. Does it fairly represent the country? If not, how could it be bettered? If so, how does it answer the accusation that it grants more weight to one man's vote than another's? Hodges and Vowell dig into the "steel man" arguments on both sides, and compare the EC with the Bill of Rights. Hodges recommends Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mysteries (complete with accents): Strong Poison, Have His Carcass, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon.Vowell recommends CGP Grey's video "The Trouble with the Electoral College" as an intelligent anti-EC argument.

We ... have finally returned and while the show isn't as long right now as you've come to expect in the past we hope that with a few shorter shows as we ease our way back in you'll be forgiving.  So please enjoy our offerings.  We start with Navy Lark and listen to what happens when the ship celebrates an important aniversary.  We then move to the history of music where we'll be discussing the French Revolution and per the request of Eric Troup we'll be beginning Gaudy Night a five part Peter Whimsay serial.  For the first time it's in stereo.  Hey Lynette, I'm back to stay.  Hope you all enjoy.

Gail, Hazel and host Philippa are transported to Orkney as they explore the life and works of the poet and novelist George Mackay Brown OBE. Together with his biographer Maggie Fergusson and Colin Waters of the Scottish Poetry Library, they bring to light a writer who was at once a solitary soul and a raconteur, a lover and a drinker, a member of the Edinburgh literati yet fame-shy. From the oft-recited ‘Hamnavoe’ to the Booker-nominated ‘Beside the Ocean of Time’ Mackay Brown’s work sings of his island roots, interweaving life and social history with myth and legend. In this month’s travels through the magazine’s archives, Christopher Robbins and Rory Murphy tackle the high falutin literary rap of ‘Finnegans Wake’, and there are the usual wide-ranging recommendations for reading off the beaten track too. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 39 minutes; 59 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch (mailto:anna@foxedquarterly.com) with Anna in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman novels (https://foxedquarterly.com/products/rosemary-sutcliff-classic-childrens-books/) : The Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch (1:30) Slightly Foxed Issue 63 (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/slightly-foxed-issue-63-published-1-september-2019/) (2:17) The Scots Kitchen (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/fm-mcneill-scots-kitchen/) , F. M. McNeill (2:39) The Balkan Trilogy (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/olivia-manning-balkan-trilogy/) , Olivia Manning (2:56) Gaudy Night (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/gaudy-night/) , Dorothy L. Sayers (3:01) Boy (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/roald-dahl-boy/) and Going Solo (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/roald-dahl-going-solo-no-49/) , Roald Dahl (3:13) Attrib (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/eley-williams-attrib-and-other-stories/) , Eley Williams (5:15) Cousin Rosamund, the third title in Rebecca West’s Saga of the Century trilogy, is out of print (5:53) The Outrun (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/amy-liptrot-the-outrun-slightly-foxed/) , Amy Liptrot (6:04) George Mackay Brown: The Life, Maggie Fergusson is out of print (7:21) Greenvoe (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/george-mackey-brown-greenvoe/) , George Mackay Brown (19:20) Following a Lark: Poems, George Mackay Brown is out of print (21:05) Beside the Ocean of Time (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/geroge-mackay-brown-beside-the-ocean-of-time/) , George Mackay Brown (21:15) Finnegans Wake (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/james-joyce-finnegans-wake/) , James Joyce (24:54) Jeremy, Hugh Walpole is out of print (33:31) Slow Horses (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/mick-herron-slow-horses/) and Joe Country (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/mick-herron-joe-country/) , Mick Herron (34:57) Leaving Alexandria (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/richard-holloway-leaving-alexandria/) , Richard Holloway (36:21) Noctuary (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/niall-campbell-noctuary/) , Niall Campbell (37:28) Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump (https://shopcatalog.com/nobody-hates-trump-more-than-trump/) , David Shields (37:51) Related Slightly Foxed Articles  Porridge and the Shorter Catechism (https://foxedquarterly.com/f-m-mcneill-the-scots-kitchen-literary-review/) , Morag MacInnes on F. M. McNeill, The Scots Kitchen, Issue 63 (2:36) Hauntings (https://foxedquarterly.com/dorothy-l-sayers-gaudy-night-literary-review/) , Michèle Roberts on Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, Issue 63 (3:01) Sound Nonsense (https://foxedquarterly.com/james-joyce-finnegans-wake-literary-review/) , Christopher Robbins on James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Issue 22 (25:03) Other Links The Scottish Poetry Library (https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/) , Edinburgh (7:23) ‘Hamnavoe’ by George Mackay Brown is available to read in full on The Poetry Archive (https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/hamnavoe) (12:58) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach Farewell to Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable (https://www.podcastable.co.uk/)

Folks! This third part to our series on English mystery writer and her creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, was hidden away in an obscure corner of my flashdrive until this day. Now you can hear of the last several books, our favorites, and the conclusion of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane's thrilling love story.   Music: Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E minor Op. 44/2- 3. Andante  Future Mind by Powerbleeder Wimsey novels in chronological order: Whose Body? (1923) Clouds of Witness (1926) Unnatural Death (1927) The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) Strong Poison (1931)- Xoe's Fav The Five Red Herrings (1931) Have His Carcase (1932) - Rita's favorite Murder Must Advertise (1933) - Rita and Xoe's favorite The Nine Tailors (1934)- Xoe's favorite Gaudy Night (1935) Busman's Honeymoon (1937) Bibliography: Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography, 1981. Coomes, David. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life, 1992. Dale, Alzina Stone. The Story of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1978. Hitchman, Janet. Such a Strange Lady, 1975. Kenney, Catherine McGehee. The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1990. (A scholarly look at the themes of social criticism in Sayers' work.) Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 1993. (The best one in my opinion. It is writen in an open, modern style and contain many more pictures than than the others.) Video: The best series - A Dorothy L Sayers Mystery. BBC, 1987. This cover 3 out 4 of the Wimsey/Vane books - Strong Poison (in which they meet and Peter saves Harriet from the gallows), Have His Carcase (in which Harriet finds a body, which subsequently disappears, and partners with Peter in investigating and solving the murder), Gaudy Night (in which Harriet goes back Oxford for a reunion and runs into a mystery about a vicious vandal; while the plots thickens, so does their romance). Best Wimsey is Edward Petherbridge and best Vane is Harriet Walter, both of whom are in this series. The other series was made by the BBC in 1970. It starred Ian Carmichel as Wimsey. Carmichel looks nothing like Wimsey and, to my mind, does not act like Wimsey either. This series includes: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club The Nine Tailors Murder Must Advertise Five Red Herrings Clouds of Witness There were also a couple films made, both of which Sayers absolutely hated. They are: The Silent Passenger, 1935, British, starring John Loden and Peter Haddon. Busman's Honeymoon (US: The Haunted Honeymoon), starring Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings, 1940. A short Interview with Edward Patherbridge on playing Lord Peter Wimsey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsMOMbCpBFU Link to an article illustration about Sayer's advertisment for Guiness https://vinepair.com/articles/history-guinness-toucan-ads/

This week, your hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins are covering the final chapters of Gaudy Night, starting with chapter 16. They also announce the opening of the Patreon community called "Friends and Fellows" where they will be offering a wealth of additional content. In this episode, Cindy and Angelina explore the ideas in these last chapters of the book, including the fact that this is more a novel of manners than it is a thriller. Other topics of discussion include the development of Lord Peter's character, the vampire motif present throughout the novel, and the significance of the sonnet form and musical counterpoint references in this book. Angelina wonders at the brilliance of Sayers and the way she weaves the head versus heart theme into the text. Cindy brings up the problem of principle and passion, and the loss of metaphor in our culture. Of course, no discussion of the end of Gaudy Nightwould be complete without mentioning the proposal, and Angelina delves into the meaning of the Latin words used by Lord Peter. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human?by Dorothy Sayers "The Summer of the Short Story" series Heureux, Qui Comme Ulysse by Joachim du Bellay, translated by Richard Wilbur Happy the man who, journeying far and wide As Jason or Ulysses did, can then Turn homeward, seasoned in the ways of men, And claim his own, and there in peace abide! When shall I see the chimney-smoke divide The sky above my little town: ah, when Stroll the small gardens of that house again Which is my realm and crown, and more beside? Better I love the plain, secluded home My fathers built, than bold façades of Rome; Slate pleases me as marble cannot do; Better than Tiber's flood my quiet Loire, Those little hills than these, and dearer far Than great sea winds the zephyrs of Anjou. Book List: (affiliate links) The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sydney Mere Motherhood Newsletters by Cindy Rollins Crow Lake by Mary Lawson Thanks to our Sponsor: The Literary Life Podcast is brought to you New College Franklin. Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, NCF is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. Support The Literary Life: Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the “Friends and Fellows Community” on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

In this episode of The Literary Life, Cindy Rollins and Angelina Stanford discuss chapters 8-15 of Dorothy L. Sayers' book Gaudy Night. In addition to reviewing the plot points of interest in these chapters, Cindy and Angelina focus in on the interweaving of plot, theme, and setting in Gaudy Night. They talk about how Oxford is more than just a place in which the story is told, but is almost a character itself, as well as being the place where Lord Peter and Harriet can meet as equals. Another recurring topic is the continuing conversation about what it means to be a woman and an intellectual, as well as how marriage changes both men and women. In these chapters, we see more of Harriet and Lord Peter's relationship, and we get to know Lord Peter in a fuller light. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night, ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. Book List: The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett (included in This is the Story of a Happy Marriage) Thanks to our Sponsor: The Literary Life Podcast is brought to you New College Franklin. Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, NCF is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Today on The Literary Life, your hosts Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins sit down for a chat with their friend and fellow reader, Mary Jo Tate. As well as being an avid reader, Mary Jo is an author, editor, teacher, book collector and single mother to 4 young men. A veteran homeschooler, Mary Jo is the author of Flourish: Balance for Homeschool Moms, and you can learn more about her and her work at FlourishAtHome.com. In this interview, Angelina and Cindy talk with Mary Jo about her own background as a reader, beginning with her childhood memories of books. They discuss the influence of family, librarians and teachers on the life of a young reader. Mary Jo talks about different seasons of her reading life and gives some advice for the busy, exhausting time as a mother of young children. Another topic of discussion is how Mary Jo's education and profession grew out of her love of literature. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 7 (May 28): Gaudy Night ch 8-15 Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night, ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Book List: (Amazon affiliate links) Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis Andrew Lang's Fairy Books The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald At Home in Mitford by Jan KaronS Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson It little profits that an idle king,  By this still hearth, among these barren crags,  Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole  Unequal laws unto a savage race,  That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.  I cannot rest from travel: I will drink  Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd  Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those  That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when  Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades  Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;  For always roaming with a hungry heart  Much have I seen and known; cities of men  And manners, climates, councils, governments,  Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;  And drunk delight of battle with my peers,  Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.  I am a part of all that I have met;  Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'  Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades  For ever and forever when I move.  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!  As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life  Were all too little, and of one to me  Little remains: but every hour is saved  From that eternal silence, something more,  A bringer of new things; and vile it were  For some three suns to store and hoard myself,  And this gray spirit yearning in desire  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.           This is my son, mine own Telemachus,  To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil  This labour, by slow prudence to make mild  A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees  Subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere  Of common duties, decent not to fail  In offices of tenderness, and pay  Meet adoration to my household gods,  When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.           There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:  There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,  Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—  That ever with a frolic welcome took  The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed  Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;  Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;  Death closes all: but something ere the end,  Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.  The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:  The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep  Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  'T is not too late to seek a newer world.  Push off, and sitting well in order smite  The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths  Of all the western stars, until I die.  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.  Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'  We are not now that strength which in old days  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  One equal temper of heroic hearts,  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Thanks to our Sponsor: The Literary Life Podcast is brought to you New College Franklin. Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, NCF is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

This week on The Literary Life, Angelina and Cindy discuss the next few chapters of Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. In this episode, Angelina explores the question of why all the epigraphs opening each chapter are from Renaissance writers. Aside from recapping plot points, Cindy and Angelina also chat about the following topics: the unnatural nature of the crime and of the cloistered atmosphere; the gothic themes present in this novel; Harriet's lack of self-awareness; further contemplations on love and marriage. Upcoming Show Schedule: Episode 6 (May 21): The Literary Life of .... Surprise Guest Episode 7 (May 28): Gaudy Night ch 8-15 Episode 8 (June 4): Gaudy Night ch 16-23, complete Episode 9 (June 11): Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Lot's Wife by Anna Akhmatova (trans. by Richard Wilbur) The just man followed then his angel guide Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright; But a wild grief in his wife's bosom cried, Look back, it is not too late for a last sight Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn, And the tall house with empty windows where You loved your husband and your babes were born. She turned, and looking on the bitter view Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain; Into transparent salt her body grew, And her quick feet were rooted in the plain. Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not The least of our losses, this unhappy wife? Yet in my heart she will not be forgot Who, for a single glance, gave up her life. Book List: Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (1967 film adaptation) Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers Thanks to our Sponsor: The Literary Life Podcast is brought to you New College Franklin. Located in beautiful Franklin Tennessee, NCF is a four year Christian Liberal Arts college dedicated to excellent academics and discipling relationships among students and faculty. Connect with Us: Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/ Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB

Today’s Book List: (affiliate links) The World’s Last Night and Lilies That Fester by C.S. Lewis The Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers Nancy Drew #45: The Spider Sapphire Mystery by Carolyn Keene The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald Knox Multiple novels by Agatha Christie Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins The Albert Campion series by Margery Allingham The Roderick Alleyn series by Ngaio Marsh The Flavia de Luce series by Allen Bradley The Inspector Appleby Mystery series by Michael Innes The Daughter of Time and Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey Murder Fantastical by Patricia Moyes The Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) Multiple novels by Alexander McCall Smith Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie King The Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny Brave New World by David Archer The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters The Adam Dalgliesh Series by P.D. James   Find out more about our sponsor, New College Franklin at https://newcollegefranklin.org/   Connect with us! Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/   Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB   Today’s poem: The Listeners by Walter De La Mare   ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,      Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses      Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret,      Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time;      ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller;      No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,      Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners      That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight      To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,      That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken      By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness,      Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,      ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even      Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,      That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners,      Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house      From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,      And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward,      When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Today’s Book List: (affiliate links) Gaudy Night, Strong Poison, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers   Seeking God by Esther de Waal and Kathleen Norris The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis   Essays by Dorothy Sayers: Are Women Human?, The Mind of the Maker,  and Letters to a Diminished Church   Find out more about our sponsor, New College Franklin at https://newcollegefranklin.org/   Connect with us! Find Angelina at  https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/ Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/   Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB   Today’s poem: A Slice of Wedding Cake by Robert Graves   Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls Married impossible men? Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out, And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.   Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic, Foul-tempered or depraved (Dramatic foils chosen to show the world How well women behave, and always have behaved).   Impossible men: idle, illiterate, Self-pitying, dirty, sly, For whose appearance even in City parks Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.   Has God's supply of tolerable husbands Fallen, in fact, so low? Or do I always over-value woman At the expense of man? Do I? It might be so.

Episode 9 "Lord Peter Wimsey Novels" Shownotes Links to Pictures of Dorothy's Crushes and Flames: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cournoshttp://www.writeopinions.com/eric-whelptonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Allen_(conductor) Music: Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E minor Op. 44/2- 3. Andante Wimsey novels in chronological order: Whose Body? (1923)Clouds of Witness (1926)Unnatural Death (1927)The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)Strong Poison (1931)- Xoe's FavThe Five Red Herrings (1931)Have His Carcase (1932) - Rita's favoriteMurder Must Advertise (1933) - Rita and Xoe's favoriteThe Nine Tailors (1934)- Xoe's favoriteGaudy Night (1935)Busman's Honeymoon (1937) Bibliography: Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography, 1981.Coomes, David. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life, 1992.Dale, Alzina Stone. The Story of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1978.Hitchman, Janet. Such a Strange Lady, 1975.Kenney, Catherine McGehee. The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1990. (A scholarly look at the themes of social criticism in Sayers' work.)Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 1993. (The best one in my opinion. It is writen in an open, modern style and contain many more pictures than than the others.) Video: The best series - A Dorothy L Sayers Mystery. BBC, 1987. This cover 3 out 4 of the Wimsey/Vane books - Strong Poison (in which they meet and Peter saves Harriet from the gallows), Have His Carcase (in which Harriet finds a body, which subsequently disappears, and partners with Peter in investigating and solving the murder), Gaudy Night (in which Harriet goes back Oxford for a reunion and runs into a mystery about a vicious vandal; while the plots thickens, so does their romance).Best Wimsey is Edward Petherbridge and best Vane is Harriet Walter, both of whom are in this series. The other series was made by the BBC in 1970. It starred Ian Carmichel as Wimsey. Carmichel looks nothing like Wimsey and, to my mind, does not act like Wimsey either. This series includes:The Unpleasantness at the Bellona ClubThe Nine TailorsMurder Must AdvertiseFive Red HerringsClouds of Witness There were also a couple films made, both of which Sayers absolutely hated. They are:The Silent Passenger, 1935, British, starring John Loden and Peter Haddon. Busman's Honeymoon (US: The Haunted Honeymoon), starring Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings, 1940. A short Interview with Edward Petherbridge on playing Lord Peter Wimsey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsMOMbCpBFU Link to an article illustration about Sayer's advertisment for Guiness: https://vinepair.com/articles/history-guinness-toucan-ads/

In this episode, Nicole Chung recommends Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers and Becky Chambers recommends Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin. This episode of Recommended is sponsored by The Kingfisher Secret from McClelland & Stewart and Penguin Teen.

Music:Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E minor Op. 44/2- 3. Andante Wimsey novels in chronological order:Whose Body? (1923)Clouds of Witness (1926)Unnatural Death (1927)The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)Strong Poison (1931)- Xoe's FavThe Five Red Herrings (1931)Have His Carcase (1932) - Rita's favoriteMurder Must Advertise (1933) - Rita and Xoe's favoriteThe Nine Tailors (1934)- Xoe's favoriteGaudy Night (1935)Busman's Honeymoon (1937) Bibliography:Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography, 1981.Coomes, David. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life, 1992.Dale, Alzina Stone. The Story of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1978.Hitchman, Janet. Such a Strange Lady, 1975.Kenney, Catherine McGehee. The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1990. (A scholarly look at the themes of social criticism in Sayers' work.)Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 1993. (The best one in my opinion. It is writen in an open, modern style and contain many more pictures than than the others.) Video:The best series - A Dorothy L Sayers Mystery. BBC, 1987. This cover 3 out 4 of the Wimsey/Vane books - Strong Poison (in which they meet and Peter saves Harriet from the gallows), Have His Carcase (in which Harriet finds a body, which subsequently disappears, and partners with Peter in investigating and solving the murder), Gaudy Night (in which Harriet goes back Oxford for a reunion and runs into a mystery about a vicious vandal; while the plots thickens, so does their romance).Best Wimsey is Edward Petherbridge and best Vane is Harriet Walter, both of whom are in this series.The other series was made by the BBC in 1970. It starred Ian Carmichel as Wimsey. Carmichel looks nothing like Wimsey and, to my mind, does not act like Wimsey either. This series includes:The Unpleasantness at the Bellona ClubThe Nine TailorsMurder Must AdvertiseFive Red HerringsClouds of Witness There were also a couple films made, both of which Sayers absolutely hated. They are:The Silent Passenger, 1935, British, starring John Loden and Peter Haddon. Busman's Honeymoon (US: The Haunted Honeymoon), starring Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings, 1940. A short Interview with Edward Patherbridge on playing Lord Peter Wimsey:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsMOMbCpBFU Link to an article illustration about Sayer's advertisment for Guiness: https://vinepair.com/articles/history-guinness-toucan-ads/

We take a break from STRESS and go back to our favorite books read between 2010 and 2014. Books We Have Loved; 00:53 Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers Soulless by Gail Carriger Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by […] The post Fangirl Happy Hour, Episode #62 – “Knowledge is Power” appeared first on Fangirl Happy Hour.