Stella Rimington on Dorothy L Sayers

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2014

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dame Stella Rimington, former director of MI5 and a celebrated crime writer herself, nominates for a Great Life that of Dorothy L Sayers. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey novel was published in the 1920s, the Golden Age of crime fiction, and he is still very much with us, appearing often on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She went on to enjoy a huge popularity with her crime novels and then turned to writing Christian essays and plays, most notably the series for the BBC on the life of Christ – which stirred up a great controversy as no-one had before impersonated Jesus on the radio. Dame Stella tells Matthew Parris why the paradoxes and contradictions in Dorothy Sayers' life fascinate her, and explains how Sayers' writing influences her own. With Seona Ford, chairman of the Dorothy L Sayers Society. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult?
0:06.0	What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are?
0:10.0	I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas.
0:16.4	Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth.
0:23.0	Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003.
0:27.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.0	Great Lives is a download from Radio 4.
0:32.0	We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear.
0:35.4	In November 1940, the subject of today's programme wrote this to a friend.
0:41.6	I've been having the usual struggle with the play at the BBC. What happens
0:45.9	is that the producer goes away and a yammering kind of letter is sent to me by some female
0:51.1	he has left in charge, who thinks it her duty to tell me how to write
0:55.2	English and how to write for the stage. I've been firm about this but I expect
1:00.3	we shall have ructions especially as I wrote a rather stiff letter, pointing out
1:04.4	that they were buying about a hundred pounds worth of work for twelve guineas, and intimating
1:09.4	that they had to put up with what they got. Well, what they got was an innovative cycle of plays about
1:16.7	the life of Christ, which created a broadcasting controversy.
1:20.9	Oh, my children, listen to me.
1:26.3	I shall not be with you much longer.
1:28.8	Soon, very soon you will look for me in vain.
1:33.0	For as I once told the people, so now I tell you,
1:37.0	I am going where you cannot come.
	...

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