"Gaudy Night" By Dorothy L Sayers

 The eleventh Lord Peter Wimsey whodunnit principally starring Harriet Vane, whodunnit author and Lord Peter's lover interest. Harriet goes back to her Oxford College who are experiencing an outbreak of poison pen letters and vandalism. Can Harriet track down the culprit before something serious happens?

The Crime Writers' Association ranked it 4th in their top 100 best crime novels of all time; the Mystery Writers of America ranked it 18th in their equivalent list. It clearly influenced Laurels Are Poison by Gladys Mitchell and other novels show its influence.

It is very much of its time. The women's college is a claustrophobic place where a Senior Common Room of the stuffy Misses endlessly debate whether a woman should be a wife and mother or an academic virgin. The pre-war rules by which they govern the students reflect old-fashioned sexist and puritanical mores. One must wear gowns to Hall and never ever ever bring a man into the college. A period piece.

Meanwhile the male undergraduates are represented as a set of irresponsible fools intent on climbing trees for wagers and driving fast cars and drinking expensive vintages. But, being almost exclusively upper class, they are good sorts with finer feelings to which one can appeal.

This is by no means your average crime novel. It's much more than that. It is told in the past tense and the third person but from the exclusive point of view of protagonist-narrator Harriet Vane, an alumnus of the Oxford College, who combines a formidable academic intellect with a knowledge of the non-academic world contingent upon writing crime novels for a living and being involved in a scandal involving having a pre-marital relationship and being tried for murder. As well as exploring the relationships between the college fellows (who are mostly unmarried women) and developing a large number of characters, the book chronicles Harriet's uncertainty as to whether she should respond positively to a proposal of marriage from Lord Peter Wimsey: does she love him? could she live with him? She's also trying to write another novel and we learn about the difficulties facing her in its construction. She's also tempted by the lure of retreating from the world and re-immersing herself in academic life, tempted by withdrawal to the cloister. 

It is as well a celebration of the author's own learning. It positively teems with learned references. It so needs footnotes! Particularly to the quotations in Latin (and even one in Greek). Here are some I spotted: 

• “If only one could come back to this quiet place, where only intellectual achievement counted ... But she doubted whether she were now capable of any such withdrawal. ... No one can bathe in the same river twice, not even in the Isis.” (Ch 1) which references the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus.
• “Magnificent thought Harriet, but it is not war.” (Ch 2) which references the comment supposedly made about the gallantry shown by the soldiers in the Charge of the Light Brigade by French general Pierre Bosquet: 'C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre'.
• “Like that thing that keeps cropping up in the new kind of physics ... Planck’s constant, or whatever they call it.” (Ch 2) referencing quantum physics, very new at the time.
• “I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done.” (Ch 4) which alludes to the phrase "we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done" which is part of the General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer for the Church or England.
• “I shall consider nothing but the value of the Thing-in-Itself, unmoved by any pressure of public opinion.” (Ch 8) which references a concept found in Kantian philosophy, the 'Ding an sich'.
• “We will continue to rob Peter to pay all.” (Ch 10) comes from a proverb: 'to rob Peter to pay Paul'.
• “The architecture of my own ancient foundation is mathematically compounded of ambition, distraction, uglification and derision.” (Ch 17) alludes to Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll in which the Mock Turtle describes the operations of arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).
• “One damn gin after another.” (Ch 19) refers to the folk saying, popular after 1909, that 'life is just one damned thing after another'.
• It also mentions a number of novels including The Search by C P Snow (which plays a part in the plot) and those by Galsworthy (three times; he had one the Nobel Prize in Literature three years before the book was set), and quotes from The Daniel Jazz.

And yet it is still a crime novel and the pieces of the jigsaw are elegantly inserted. They're easy to spot if you already know whodunnit and since this was my third reading of this novel I took pleasure in spotting how subtly the clues were given. 

It's not surprising, given how much is in this novel, that it is so long. If you're looking for a pure crime puzzle, seek elsewhere. But, despite its length, I thought Sayers kept up the pace brilliantly well, using the device of Lord Peter's unavailability to ratchet up the tension in the middle of the novel, when we come unbearably close to a murder and even the weather, hot and sultry before a thunderstorm - prefect pathetic fallacy! - gives Harriet a headache. There's even the delightful humour if undergraduates Mr Pomfret and Lord Peter's nephew Saint-George. And a couple of pages which are interior monologue if not stream of consciousness!

A delightful book.

Selected quotes:

• “As she beat the loose fluff from it, a tortoise-shell butterfly, disturbed from its hibernation beneath the flap of the trunk-lid, fluttered out into the brightness of the window, where it was caught and held by a cobweb.” (Ch 1)
• "As one grew older, as one established one’s self, one gained a new delight in formality." (C 1)
• "The mouth was the mouth of one who has been generous and repented of generosity; its wide corners were tucked back to give nothing away." (C 1)
• "As any student of literature must, she knew all the sins of the world by name, but it was doubtful whether she recognised them when she met them in real life." (C 1)
• "It was as though a misdemeanour committed by a person she knew was disarmed and disinfected by the contact." (C 1)
• "The fact that one had loved and sinned and suffered and escaped death was of far less ultimate moment than a single footnote in a dim academic journal establishing the priority of a manuscript or restoring a lost iota subscript." (C 1)
• “Of a scrupulous personal integrity, she embraced the irregularities of other people in a wide, unquestioning charity.” (Ch 1)
• “She looked as though the word ‘compromise’ had been omitted from her vocabulary.” (Ch 1)
• "It’s a matter of a + b, you know. Only there happened to be an unknown factor.’ ‘Like that thing that keeps cropping up in the new kind of physics,’ said the Dean. ‘Planck’s constant, or whatever they call it.’" (C 2)
• "there is no chance assembly of people who cannot make lively conversation about drains" (C 2)
• "Authority as such commands very little respect nowadays, and I expect that is a good thing on the whole, though it makes the work of running any kind of institution more difficult." (C 3)
• "A plough share is a nobler object than a razor. But if your natural talent is for barbering, wouldn’t it be better to be a barber, and a good barber – and use the profits (if you like) to speed the plough?" (C 3)
• "If you’d spent your time washing and cooking for a family and digging potatoes and feeding cattle, you’d know that that kind of thing takes the edge off the razor." (C 3)
• “She parted eventually from Mrs Bendick with a depressed feeling that she had seen a Derby winner making shift with a coal-cart.” (Ch 3)
• “Being a great father is either a very difficult or a very sadly unrewarded profession. Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or great wife standing behind him - or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.” (Ch 3)
• "Haunts of ancient peace were all very well, but very odd things could crawl and creep beneath lichen-covered stones." (C 3)
• "one of the innumerable women with ‘school-teacher’ stamped on their resolutely cheery countenances" (C 3)
• "She had begun to take Wimsey for granted, as one might take dynamite for granted in a munitions factory" (C 4)
• "It’s surprisin’ how few people ever mean anything definite from one year’s end to the other." (C 4)
• “Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.” (Ch 5)
• “The Dean hovered about the Chancellor like a hen with one chick.” (Ch 6)
• “She did not care much about children; but one can scarcity say so, bluntly, to those possessed of those blessings.” (Ch 6)
• “The general impression of an Angora rabbit that had gone on the loose and was astonished at the result.” (Ch 8)
• “He had the appeal of a very young dog a very large breed - a kind of amiable absurdity.” (Ch 8)
• “When you get the thing dead right and you know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvellous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day - for a bit, anyhow.” (Ch 9)
• “If there's any subject in which you're content with the second-rate, then it isn't really your subject.” (Ch 9)
• "when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it." (C 9)
• “Between Harriet and Mr Pomfret there occurred one of those silences in which the first word spoken forms like the stroke of the Gong.” (Ch 12)
• “However loudly we may assert our own unworthiness, few of us are really offended by hearing the assertion contradicted by a disinterested party.” (Ch 12)
• “The cultivated normality till it stood out of them all over in knobs, like the muscles upon professional strong men, and scarcely looked normal at all.” (Ch 13)
• "She resented the way in which he walked in and out of her mind as if it was his own flat." (C 14)
• “It was a neat and noiseless kind of sleep; the posture might be described as the half-hedgehog.” (Ch 15)
• “Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face however difficult it may be.” (Ch 15)
• "he was ready for mischief as a wilderness of monkeys." (C 17)
• "there is only one kind of wisdom that has any social value, and that is the knowledge of one’s own limitations." (C 17)
• "principles have become more dangerous than passions. It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does – if it really is a principle – is to kill somebody." (C 17)
• "The Universities are always being urged to march in the van of progress. But epic actions are all fought by the rearguard – at Roncevaux and Thermopylæ." (C 17)
• “A bad picture by a good painter is a betrayal of truth - his own truth.” (Ch 17)
• “What does it matter if it hurts like hell, so long as it makes a good book?” (Ch 18)
• "What is the use of making mistakes if you don’t make use of them?" (C 18)
• "Heroics that don’t come off are the very essence of burlesque." (C 18)
• "as understandable and pleasant as daily bread." (C 23)
• “Curious ... this desire to possess children and dictate their tastes, as though they were escaping fragments of one's self, and not separate individuals.” (Ch 21)

I first read this book decades ago when I was young and then during the Covid lock-down in December 2020 when I wrote this blog post. I amended it following my third reading in August 2026; 538 pages

First published by Victor Gollancz in 1935

My New English Library paperback was issued by Hodder and Stoughton in 2003

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

I have set myself the task of reading all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels (mostly again) in order. The ones I have read and reviewed in this blog so far include:

• Whose Body in which my Lord and his manservant, Bunter, are introduced
• Clouds of Witness in which Lord Peter must sleuth to get his brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, off a murder charge; Bunter assists; policeman Parker falls in love with Peter's sister Mary
• Unnatural Death which introduces another Wimsey sidekick: Miss Climpson; Bunter is involved
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Bunter is involved as is Miss Climpson
• Strong Poison which introduces Harriet Vane, a detective writer who becomes Lord Peter's love interest; Bunter realises Lord Peter's affection first
• The Five Red Herrings; Lord Peter in Scotland; Bunter in the background
• Have His Carcase: Harriet and Peter investigate the death of a gigolo with dreams; Bunter has a small supporting role
• Murder Must Advertise: Peter goes undercover at an advertising agency; Bunter plays a very small role; policeman Parker has married Mary and they have sons
• The Nine Tailors: Peter investigates the discovery of a body in someone else's grave in a small fenland village. Floods and campanology.
• Busman's Honeymoon: Peter and Harriet holiday together with Bunter but the self-catering cottage includes a corpse

There are also Wimsey books written since the death of DLS by Jill Paton Walsh. These include:

• The Attenbury Diamonds in which Lord Peter, in 1951, recalls the circumstances of his first case, the Attenbury Diamonds, which have gone missing again.
• The Late Scholar: in which Wimsey returns to Oxford

"Murder Must Advertise" by Dorothy L Sayers

Lord Peter Wimsey works undercover in an advertising agency to discover if an apparently accidental death was murder and, if it was, whodunnit. Throw in a drug ring (and orgies, even in the 1930s!) and a climactic cricket match and you have all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery. It's so good it was rated as the 22nd best crime novel of all time by the British Crime Writers' Association and 56th by the Mystery Writers of America.

Plus, since Sayers herself worked in advertising (she was responsible for the Guinness Toucan), we have some thought-provoking observations on the industry (not the least of which, from hindsight, is the guilt-free encouragement of millions to smoke cigarettes, such as:“We want to get women down to serious smoking. Too many of them play about with it.”; Ch 16):

• “You’ll soon find that the biggest obstacle to good advertising is the client.” (Ch 1)
• “Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There’s yeast in bread, but you can’t make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising ... provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow.” (Ch 5)
• “Whatever you’re doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you’re buying, pause and buy something different. Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up! Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied. If once you are satisfied, all our wheels will run down.” (Ch 5)
•  “He had never realised the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.” (Ch 11)

Some memorable moments:

• “Why does Ingleby praise him with faint damns?” (Ch 3)
• “You know how silly people are. They like superfluities.” (Ch 4)
• “‘Your narrative style,’ said Parker, ‘though racy, is a little elliptical. Could you not begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, and then, if you are able to, stop?’” (Ch 5)
• “‘Never mind the generalisations,’ said Parker, ‘they always lead to bad reasoning.’” (Ch 5)
• “It’s all this University education. What does it do? It takes a boy, or a young woman for that matter, and keeps him in leading-strings in the playground when he ought to be ploughing his own furrow in the face of reality.” (Ch 6)
• “‘The terror induced by forests and darkness,’ said a mocking voice from somewhere over her head, ‘was called by the Ancients, Panic fear, or the fear of the great god Pan. It is interesting to observe that modern progress has not altogether succeeded in banishing it from ill-disciplined minds.’” (Ch 9)
• “If everybody had the same face ... there’d be no pretty women.’” (Ch 10)
• “Mr Tallboy was really aghast. He was stricken with shame, and, like many shame-stricken people, took refuge in an outburst of rage against the nearest person handy.” (Ch 10)
• “He was a large, saturnine man, blank as to morals, but comparatively sober in his habits, as people must be who make money out of other people’s vices.” (Ch 11)
• “Nerves is nerves, and a thing like a goat might ’appen to anybody” (Ch 12)
• “Everyone suspects an eager desire to curry favour, but rudeness, for some reason, is always accepted as a guarantee of good faith.” (Ch 15)
• “‘It’s always obvious where money goes to,’ said Miss Meteyard, sardonically. ‘The point is, where does it come from?’” (Ch 17)
• “He was like a favourite book – you liked him so well that you were always yearning to lend him to somebody else.” (Ch 17)
• “No doubt it was because agreement on any point was so rare in a quarrelsome world, that the fantastical announcements of advertisers asserted it so strongly and so absurdly.” (Ch 17)
• “The firm of Brotherhood believed in ideal conditions for their staff. It was their pet form of practical Christianity; in addition to which, it looked very well in their advertising literature and was a formidable weapon against the trade unions. Not, of course, that Brotherhood’s had the slightest objection to trade unions as such. They had merely discovered that comfortable and well-fed people are constitutionally disinclined for united action of any sort – a fact which explains the asinine meekness of the income-tax payer.” (Ch 18)

An enjoyable read, although the unravelling of the mystery seems a little obvious.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

I have set myself the task of reading all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels (mostly again) in order. The ones I have read and reviewed in this blog so far include:

• Whose Body in which my Lord and his manservant, Bunter, are introduced
• Clouds of Witness in which Lord Peter must sleuth to get his brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, off a murder charge; Bunter assists; policeman Parker falls in love with Peter's sister Mary
• Unnatural Death which introduces another Wimsey sidekick: Miss Climpson; Bunter is involved
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Bunter is involved as is Miss Climpson
• Strong Poison which introduces Harriet Vane, a detective writer who becomes Lord Peter's love interest; Bunter realises Lord Peter's affection first
• The Five Red Herrings; Lord Peter in Scotland; Bunter in the background
• Have His Carcase: Harriet and Peter investigate the death of a gigolo with dreams; Bunter has a small supporting role
• Murder Must Advertise: Peter goes undercover at an advertising agency; Bunter plays a very small role; policeman Parker has married Mary and they have sons

There are also Wimsey books written since the death of DLS by Jill Paton Walsh. These include:

• The Attenbury Emeralds in which Lord Peter, in 1951, recalls the circumstances of his first case, the Attenbury Emeralds, which have gone missing again.
• The Late Scholar: in which Wimsey returns to Oxford

"The Five Red Herrings" by Dorothy L Sayers

A Lord Peter Wimsey whodunnit. When an artist is found murdered, there are six suspects, all artists. The discovery of the body involves some very careful unpicking of the timing of alibis made with the assistance of a bicycle and the local train timetable.

This is a classic 'puzzle' mystery.

As it says in the introduction, "Lord Peter Wimsey, with his aristocratic manners and mien, may seem precious in the modern era of alcoholic, working-class coppers with fractured marriages" but he is at his debonair best in this book. Of the other recurring characters, Bunter the servant has a very small part to play while girlfriend Harriet Vane and private sleuth Miss Climpson do not appear.

The book is amusing for its depiction of the dialogue of the Scots, a comedy cockney (I actually laughed out loud), and a fabulous character who lithpth.

I also enjoyed it for its description of artists working:

• "That’s the green for the gentleman’s coat. No – don’t pinch it, or you’ll get it all over you. Yes, you can put the cap on. Yes, that’s to keep it from drying up. Yes, put it back in the box . . . That’s yellow. No, I know there isn’t any yellow in the picture, but I want it to mix with the green to make it brighter. You’ll see. Don’t forget the cap. What? Oh, anywhere in the box. White – yes, it’s a big tube isn’t it? You’ll see, you have to put a little white into most of the colours – why? Well, they wouldn’t come right without" (C 20)
• "That’s called a palette knife. No, it isn’t meant to be sharp. It’s meant for cleaning your palette and so on. Some people use a knife to paint with. Yes, it’s nice and wiggly, but it won’t stand too much of that kind of treatment, my lad. Yes, of course you can paint with a knife if you want to. You can paint with your fingers if it comes to that. No, I shouldn’t advise you to try. Yes, well, it makes a rougher kind of surface, all blobs and chunks of paint." (C 20)
• "I’m going to begin with the sky. Why? Well, why do you think? Yes, because it’s at the top. Yes, of course that blue’s too dark, but I’m going to put some white in it. Yes, and some green. You didn’t know there was any green in the sky? Well, there is. And sometimes there’s purple and pink too. No, I’m not going to paint a purple and pink sky." (C 20)

There are a couple of moments when Sayers has Lord Peter semi-quotes Jerome K Jerome's wonderful assertion about work ("I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."; from Three Men in a Boat) when he says, for example: "I think the most joyous thing in life is to loaf round and watch another bloke doing a job of work." (C 21)

She also says: "Life’s just one damn thing after another." (C 19).  This, presumably, pays homage to ODTAA, an adventure novel published by John Masefield in 1926, although it would seem that the phrase was around earlier in the twentieth century.

Other great moments:

• "To boast loudly in public of one’s own country seemed to him indecent – like enlarging on the physical perfections of one’s own wife in a smoking room." (C 1)
• "a sky full of bright sun and rolling cloud-banks, hedges filled with flowers, a well-made road, a lively engine and the prospect of a good corpse at the end of it, Lord Peter’s cup of happiness was full. He was a man who loved simple pleasures." (C 2)
• "The wild garlic was over now, but the scent of it seemed still to hang about the place in memory, filling it with the shudder of vampire wings" (C 2)
• "it doesn’t do to murder people, however offensive they may be." (C 2)
• "I’m probably the least awe-inspiring man in Kirkcudbright. I was born looking foolish and every day in every way I am getting foolisher and foolisher." (C 6)
• "To her, the beauty of an ordered life was more than a mere phrase; it was a dogma to be preached, a cult to be practised with passion and concentration." (C 6)
• "the more you hate everybody for hating you, the more unattractive you grow" (C 6)
• "'I have always done my duty as his wife.’     ‘Too true,’ said Wimsey. ‘He put you up on a pedestal, and you have sat on it ever since. What more could you do?’" (C 20)

May 2020

I have set myself the task of reading all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels (mostly again) in order. The ones I have read and reviewed in this blog so far include:

• Whose Body in which my Lord and his manservant are introduced
• Clouds of Witness in which Lord Peter must sleuth to get his brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, off a murder charge
• Unnatural Death which introduces another Wimsey sidekick: Miss Climpson
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
• Strong Poison which introduces Harriet Vane, a detective writer who becomes Lord Peter's love interest
• The Five Red Herrings; Lord Peter in Scotland
• Have His Carcase: Harriet and Peter investigate the death of a gigolo with dreams

There are also Wimsey books written since the death of DLS by Jill Paton Walsh. These include:

• The Attenbury Emeralds in which Lord Peter, in 1951, recalls the circumstances of his first case, the Attenbury Emeralds, which have gone missing again.
• The Late Scholar: in which Wimsey returns to Oxford

"Whose Body" by Dorothy L Sayers

A classic murder mystery, the first in the series of novels written by DLS starring her aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.

Although it is more or less obvious from a very early stage whodunnit, and the character of Wimsey is extraordinary, this is a tale told with such panache that I could enjoy every moment.

There is instant development of Lord Peter, a shell-shocked ex-Major who had experienced both trench warfare and intelligence work during the First World War, and his devoted manservant Bunter, who had looked after his lordship in the trenches, and whose contributions to the sleuthing process combined photography and the ability to go downstairs and gossip with the servants. Scotland Yard policeman Parker also makes an appearance as does Peter's brother Gerald.

Some great lines:

• "On the dead face the handsome pair of gold pince-nez mocked death with grotesque elegance." (C 1)
• "Lord Peter had a funny way of talking about books ... as if the author had confided in him beforehand, and told him how the story was put together, and which bit was written first." (C 10)

August 2019; 214 pages

I have set myself the task of reading all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels (mostly again) in order. The ones I have read and reviewed in this blog so far include:

• Whose Body in which my Lord and his manservant are introduced
• Clouds of Witness in which Lord Peter must sleuth to get his brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, off a murder charge
• Unnatural Death which introduces another Wimsey sidekick: Miss Climpson
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
• Strong Poison which introduces Harriet Vane, a detective writer who becomes Lord Peter's love interest
• The Five Red Herrings; Lord Peter in Scotland
• Have His Carcase: Harriet and Peter investigate the death of a gigolo with dreams

There are also Wimsey books written since the death of DLS by Jill Paton Walsh. These include:

• The Attenbury Emeralds in which Lord Peter, in 1951, recalls the circumstances of his first case, the Attenbury Emeralds, which have gone missing again.
• The Late Scholar: in which Wimsey returns to Oxford