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Lord Peter Wimsey (radio Series)
''Lord Peter Wimsey'' is a series of full cast BBC Radio drama adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1973 and 1983, with a further adaptation of ''Gaudy Night'' mounted for BBC Audiobooks in 2005 to complete the full sequence of Sayers' novels, all starring Ian Carmichael in the title role. Cast and crew The series stars Ian Carmichael as aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Carmichael played the role concurrently in five BBC Television adaptations beginning with ''Clouds of Witness'' in April 1972. Peter Jones played Wimsey's loyal valet and assistant Mervyn Bunter in all original adaptations, and also dramatised ''Clouds of Witness'' with Tania Lieven. Gabriel Woolf featured as Inspector Charles Parker, Lord Peter's friend and contact at Scotland Yard (later brother-in-law) in three adaptations. Mystery writer Harriet Vane was played by Ann Bell (''Strong Poison''), Maria Aitken (''Have His Carcase'') and S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Drama
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera. Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s radio drama began losing its audience. However, it remains popular in much of the world. Recordings of OTR ( old-time radio) survive today in the audio archives of collectors, libraries and museums, as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harriet Vane
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957). Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets Lord Peter Wimsey while she is on trial for poisoning her lover (''Strong Poison''). The detective falls in love with her and proposes marriage but she refuses to begin a relationship with him, traumatised as she is by her dead lover's treatment of her and her recent ordeal. In ''Have His Carcase'', she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds him to be overbearing and superficial. She eventually returns his love (''Gaudy Night'') and marries him (''Busman's Honeymoon''). Character biography Harriet Vane is the only daughter of a country doctor. She was an undergraduate at Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Sayers' own Somerville College, the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annexe, on Holywell Street) and took a Fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Nine Tailors
''The Nine Tailors'' is a 1934 mystery novel by the British writer Dorothy L. Sayers, her ninth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The story is set in the Lincolnshire Fens, and revolves around a group of bell-ringers at the local parish church. The book has been described as Sayers' finest literary achievement, although not all critics were convinced by the mode of death, nor by the amount of technical campanology detail included. Plot Stranded after a car accident in the Fenland village of Fenchurch St. Paul on New Year's Eve, Lord Peter Wimsey helps ring a nine-hour peal on the church bells overnight after William Thoday, one of the ringers, is struck down with influenza. Lady Thorpe, wife of Sir Henry, the local squire, dies the next morning and Wimsey hears how the family had been blighted by the theft 20 years previously of a valuable emerald necklace which was never recovered. The family's then butler, Deacon, and his accomplice from London, Cranton, were convicted and impri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murder Must Advertise
''Murder Must Advertise'' is a 1933 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the eighth in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Most of the action of the novel takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was familiar as she had herself worked as an advertising copywriter until 1931. Plot Death Bredon arrives at Pym's Publicity Ltd, an advertising agency, to take up the post of junior copywriter. He is assigned the room of his predecessor Victor Dean, who has died in a fall down the office's iron spiral staircase. The doctor states that death was caused either by a broken neck, due to his landing on his head at the bottom of the stair, or by a wound of the right temple. The death appears suspicious, as the victim apparently made no attempt to save himself as he fell. In Dean's desk Bredon discovers a part-completed letter to the firm's proprietor, Mr Pym, telling him that something 'undesirable' had been going on in the office. Bredon befriends Pamela Dean, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Five Red Herrings
''The Five Red Herrings'' (also ''The 5 Red Herrings'') is a 1931 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her sixth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In the United States it was published in the same year under the title ''Suspicious Characters''. Foreword The novel includes a foreword in the form of a personal letter from the author "To my friend Joe Dignam, kindliest of landlords". The letter starts: "Here at last is your book about Gatehouse and Kirkcudbright. All the places are real places and all the trains are real trains, and all the landscapes are correct, except that I have run up a few new houses here and there." Plot The novel is set in Galloway, a part of Scotland popular with artists and recreational fishermen. Sandy Campbell is a talented painter, but also a notoriously quarrelsome drunkard. When he is found dead in a stream, with a still-wet half-finished painting on the bank above, it is assumed that he fell in accidentally, fracturing his skull. Lord Peter Wimsey, who is in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strong Poison
''Strong Poison'' is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears. Plot The novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her former lover, Phillip Boyes: a writer with strong views on atheism, anarchy, and free love. Publicly professing to disapprove of marriage, he had persuaded a reluctant Harriet to live with him, only to renounce his principles a year later and to propose. Harriet, outraged at being deceived, had broken off the relationship. Following the separation, the former couple had met occasionally, and the evidence at trial pointed to Boyes suffering from repeated bouts of gastric illness at around the time that Harriet was buying poisons under assumed names, to demonstrate – so she said – a plot point of her novel then in progress. Returning from a holiday in North Wales in better health, Boyes had dined with his cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Unpleasantness At The Bellona Club
''The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club'' is a 1928 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fourth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Much of the novel is set in the Bellona Club, a fictional London club for war veterans (Bellona being a Roman goddess of war). Plot On the afternoon of 10 November, ninety-year-old General Fentiman is called to the deathbed of his estranged sister, Lady Dormer, and learns that under the terms of her will he stands to inherit most of her substantial fortune – money sorely needed by his grandsons Robert and George Fentiman. However, should the General die first, nearly everything will go to Lady Dormer's companion, Ann Dorland. Lady Dormer dies the next morning, Armistice Day, and that afternoon the General is found dead in his armchair at the Bellona Club. Dr Penberthy, a club member and the General's personal physician, certifies death by natural causes but is unable to state the exact time of death. As the estate would amply provide for all three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unnatural Death (novel)
''Unnatural Death'' is a 1927 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her third featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It was published under the title ''The Dawson Pedigree'' in the United States in 1928. Plot Lord Peter Wimsey and his friend Chief Inspector Parker are told about the death, in late 1925, of an elderly woman named Agatha Dawson who had been suffering from terminal cancer. She was being cared for by Mary Whittaker, her great-niece and a trained nurse. Miss Dawson had an extreme aversion to making a will, believing that Miss Whittaker, her only known relative, would naturally inherit everything. Wimsey is intrigued in spite of the fact that there is no evidence of any crime (a post-mortem found no sign of foul play), nor any apparent motive (on Miss Dawson's death her estate did indeed pass, as she had expected and wished, to her great-niece). Wimsey sends his private investigator, Miss Katharine Climpson, to the village of Leahampton to investigate. She discovers that shor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clouds Of Witness
''Clouds of Witness'' is a 1926 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the second in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In the United States the novel was first published in 1927 under the title ''Clouds of Witnesses''. It was adapted for television in 1972, as part of a series starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter. Plot Lord Peter Wimsey's brother, the Duke of Denver, has taken a shooting lodge at Riddlesdale in Yorkshire. At 3 o'clock one morning, Captain Denis Cathcart, the fiancé of Wimsey's sister Lady Mary, is found shot dead just outside the conservatory. Mary, trying to leave the house at 3 am for a reason she declines to explain, finds Denver kneeling over Cathcart's body. Suspicion falls on Denver, as the lethal bullet had come from his revolver and he admits having quarrelled with Cathcart earlier, after receiving a letter (which he says has been lost) informing him that Cathcart had been caught cheating at cards. He maintains that he stumbled across the body afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whose Body?
''Whose Body?'' is a 1923 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. It was her debut novel, and the book in which she introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey. Plot Thipps, an architect, finds a dead body wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez in the bath of his London flat. Lord Peter Wimsey—a nobleman who has recently developed an interest in criminal investigation as a hobby—resolves to investigate the matter privately. Leading the official investigation is Inspector Sugg, who suggests that the body may be that of the famous financier Sir Reuben Levy, who disappeared from his bedroom in mysterious circumstances the night before. Sir Reuben's disappearance is in the hands of Charles Parker (detective), Inspector Charles Parker, a friend of Wimsey's. Although the body in the bath superficially resembles that of Sir Reuben, it quickly becomes clear that it is not him, and it appears that the cases may be unconnected. Wimsey joins Parker in his investigation. Thipps's flat i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Radio 4 Extra
BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7) is a British digital radio station from the BBC, broadcasting archived repeats of comedy, drama and documentary programmes nationally, 24 hours a day. It is the sister station of BBC Radio 4 and the principal broadcaster of the BBC's spoken-word archive, and as a result the majority of its programming originates from that archive. It also broadcasts extended and companion programmes to those broadcast on Radio 4, and provides a "catch-up" service for certain programmes. The station launched in December 2002 as BBC 7, broadcasting a mix of archive comedy, drama and current children's radio. The station was renamed BBC Radio 7 in 2008, then relaunched as Radio 4 Extra in April 2011. For the first quarter of 2013, Radio 4 Extra had a weekly audience of 1.642 million people and had a market share of 0.95%; in the last quarter of 2016 the numbers were 2.184 million listeners and 1.2% of market share. According to RAJAR, the station broadc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joanna David
Joanna David (born Joanna Elizabeth Hacking; 17 January 1947) is an English actress, best known for her television work. Life David was born in Lancaster, England, to Davida Elizabeth (''née'' Nesbitt) and John Almond Hacking. In 1971, she began a relationship with Edward Fox, with whom she has two children: Emilia (born 1974) and Frederick "Freddie" (born 1989). They married in 2004. She is a vice-president of the Theatrical Guild. Career Her first major television role was as Elinor Dashwood in the BBC's 1971 dramatisation of ''Sense and Sensibility'' followed a year later by ''War and Peace'', in which she played Sonya. David also appeared in the TV series ''The Last of the Mohicans'' (BBC), and in two episodes of ''Colditz'', ("Missing, Presumed Dead" and "Odd Man In", 1972) as Cathy Carter, the wife of Flt. Lt. Simon Carter (played by David McCallum). In 1975, she played Theo Dane in the BBC's television adaptation of ''Ballet Shoes'' by Noel Streatfeild. 32 years ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
