24 Jul Dorothy L Sayers

Dorothy L Sayers was a writer of detective fiction, best remembered for the aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Five of the eleven Wimsey novels – including the best known, The Nine Tailors (1934) – were adapted for television by the BBC (1972-75) starring the incomparable Ian Carmichael. Sayers’ output also included poems, plays and essays. Her most significant work, in her own view, was her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Sayers was born in Oxford in 1893, less than three years after the birth of her more celebrated contemporary, Agatha Christie. From 1922 to 1931 she worked as a copywriter at SH Benson’s advertising agency in London, where her clients included Guinness and Colman’s. She died in Witham, Essex (50 miles northeast of London) in 1957 at the age of 64. Her body was cremated and the ashes buried beneath the tower of St Anne’s Church in London’s Soho district. She is commemorated by a bronze statue across the road from her home in Witham. The local library incorporates the Dorothy L Sayers Centre.