Five Red Herrings

Dorothy L. Sayers was born in Oxford in 1893. She published her first detective novel, Whose Body?, in 1923, introducing Lord Peter Wimsey to the world. Ten more 'Wimsey' novels and four collections of short stories followed, as well as many other works of crime fiction, non-fiction and plays. Her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy is highly acclaimed, as is her cycle of twelve plays on the life of Jesus, The Man Born to be King, which was broadcast on the BBC Home Service in 1941-1942. She died in 1957, leaving behind notes and fragments of an unfinished 'Wimsey' story - Thrones, Dominations - which was subsequently completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998. Paton Walsh has since written three other Lord Peter Wimsey books.