Gaudy Night (BBC Radio Collection) CD

A full-cast dramatisation specially recorded for BBC Audiobooks, starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey When Harriet Vane attends her Oxford reunion, known as the Gaudy , the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies and poison-pen letters including one that says, Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup. Some of the notes threaten murder and one of them involves a long Latin quotation, which makes Harriet suspect that the perpetrator is probably a member of the Senior Common Room. But which of the apparently rational, respectable dons could be committing such crazed acts? When a desperate undergraduate, at her wits end after receiving a series of particularly savage letters, attempts to drown herself, Harriet decides that it is time to ask Lord Peter Wimsey for help. As his investigation draws near to uncovering the culprit, Harriet s life comes under threat. And when the mystery is finally solved, she is faced with an agonising decision: should she, after five years of rejecting his proposals, finally agree to marry Lord Peter? This release includes a special interview with top crime novelists P. D. James and Jill Paton Walsh about Gaudy Night.

Dorothy L Sayers, Ian Carmichael