Dorothy L Sayersayers is well known for many things. As a writer, a translator, a playwright,

a theologian and a feminist.

She was among the first women to receive a degree from Oxford University.

Her work in setting up the detection club and her reviews of other authors work were crucial in establishing

detective fiction as a genre and even an art all of its own.

And of course she's remembered as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsie, her ever popular aristocratic sleuth.

Like many professional and successful writers,

Seers lived a semi-public life with both her writing and details about her private life in demand by newspapers and magazines.

And to an extent she played the game as well as many of her contemporaries, joining in with discussions

about the future direction of the who-done it and speaking at events and on the

radio. But there was one thing that she never shared, not even with her closest friends, although elements of it made

its way into her fiction. In this episode we're going to learn the truth of Dorothy's

secret. Welcome to She Dunnet.

I'm Caroline Crampton.

In this episode, we're going to look more closely at Dorothy L.seer's life during

the 1920s and learn how some seismic events in her personal life influence the detective

novels she wrote during this time and after. On the 14th of October 1920, Dorothy L. Seers stood in the Sheldonian theatre in

Oxford and received her first- class degree in French.

She had finished her studies in June 1915,

but it wasn't until five years later

that the university allowed women to officially graduate,

rather than just taking the examinations, but never being given the same title that male students received by right.

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