The Bloomsbury of Dorothy L Sayers

September 14, 2019 Comments Off

In the next of our Literary Footprints 2019 posts, Sue McCarthy highlights the indelible influence of Bloomsbury on the life and work of Dorothy L Sayers. You can discover more on Sue’s walk Dorothy L Sayers Bloomsbury which features as part of our annual October literary festival, full booking details are on Sue’s walks page.

If the name Dorothy L Sayers simply conjures up an image of Edward Petherbridge or Ian Carmichael portraying a ‘silly ass’ aristocratic sleuth with a monocle, perhaps it is time to think again.

Lord Peter Wimsey’s fast cars and ample wealth may have been created as wish fulfillment in hard times, but Sayers’ reality was much closer to that of her fictional heroine Harriet Vane, an independent woman of limited means trying to make a career as a writer.

D L Sayers’ own life and the London in which she lived and worked shine through several of her novels and short stories. Pym’s agency in Murder Must Advertise is modelled closely on Benson’s, where Sayers worked for many years as a successful copywriter. In Gaudy Night it is Sayers’ own first floor bedsit overlooking Mecklenburg Square that is home for Harriet.

When we first meet Harriet in Strong Poison she is on trial for her life, accused of murder. Is there any parallel with Sayers’ own life? Is this literary revenge on her own faithless lover?

Despite the murders, Sayers’ writing often has a light touch and ready wit. Miss Climpson’s “cattery” of female investigators disguised as a secretarial agency appears in several stories and is a nice nod to Sherlock Holmes’ Bow Street Irregulars, the street urchins who are his eyes and ears. Miss Murchison’s nail-biting infiltration of the Bedford Row office of a murderous solicitor makes the heart beat faster!

This walk explores places where Sayers lived and worked, and her personal and professional life unfolds and interweaves with that of her characters. Fact and fiction overlap on the walk as they do in the novels where, for one example, fictional pathologist James Lubbock shares a strikingly similar career with real-life Bernard Spilsbury, each living in the same Bloomsbury Square and each acquiring a knighthood at much the same time.

Follow the link for the full list of our Literary Footprints 2019 walks and if you’re feeling particularly curious (and energetic!) then why not take advantage of our great value season ticket which for only £49 allows you one free place on every Literary Footprints walk throughout October!