H R F (Harry) Keating died on 27th March. He was a great friend of the Society, and our thoughts are with Sheila. A full obituary appears in Bulletin 215.
Increased postal charges: In April UK postal charges are to be raised and regrettably we shall have to pass the increase to all members who order our publications. Beginning in April all orders will have to be accompanied by payment in advance; the list of prices and postal rates will be announced in our March Bulletin and on the website.
Any subsequent rises will be announced with good warning.
Rex Walford has been named as the second person missing, feared drowned in the River Thames boat accident on 2nd January 2011.
He was an Honorary Member of the Society, having been a member since the 1970s. He wrote and directed the one-woman show Oh, No You Don’t My Poppet, which he took to the Edinburgh Festival in the very early 1980s with Miriam Rundle as DLS. He produced all 12 plays of The Man Born to be King in Cambridge in 2004, and talked to the Society at our Convention afterwards.
We send our deepest sympathies to his wife, Wendy. There will be a full obituary in the March edition of the Bulletin.
The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion: The Society is pleased to announce that the Third (Online) Edition of The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion has now been launched. Initially it is being made available exclusively to members of the Society, so if you have been waiting for the LPWC and are not yet a member, why not join now and start using it straight away!
Stocks of the Second Edition, the last printed book edition, ran out several years ago. Please note that the Society has no plans to reprint it, or to produce any future edition in printed form, since the online format allows updates to be handled much more satisfactorily. Copies of both First and Second Editions may be available on the second-hand market, although be warned that they are often sold at massively inflated prices.
E-books now available in the UK. We are pleased to report that Hodder has now released all of Dorothy L Sayers’ novels in “e-book” format. They are now or shortly will be available through Amazon and Waterstones, and should work on most e-book readers. For copyright reasons they are not currently available outside the UK − watch this space for further news.
SEVEN: An Anglo-American Literary Review Volume 26 is now available, and all other volumes are available for order.
Change to Archives ordering procedure. We are introducing some changes to the procedure for ordering items from the Society Archives, to reflect the latest advice on matters of copyright. For more details see here.
The Barbara Reynolds Award: The Dorothy L Sayers Society is pleased to announce the creation of a new award named after its President, the Italian scholar and writer Dr Barbara Reynolds.
The first award of £1000 was won by Crystal Downing for her book Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L Sayers. The award was presented on Saturday 13th June 2009 in the Michaelhouse Centre, Cambridge by Dr Barbara Reynolds.
Read more details of this and our other awards here, or read the official press announcement here.
A Detection of the Trinity by John Thurmer has been republished by the Society. Copies are available direct from us – see this page for full details.
The Christ of the Creeds and Other Broadcast Messages to the British People during World War II by Dorothy L Sayers, with an introduction and notes by Suzanne Bray, was published on DLS’ birthday, 13 June 2008. Copies can be ordered direct from us – see this page for full details.
The Wimsey Family by C W Scott-Giles has been republished by the Society. Copies can be purchased direct from us – see this page for full details.
Lesley Simpson, who took many of the photographs in the The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion, and who can often be seen at Sayers events wielding her camera, has set up a photo gallery at Fotopic, where you can order copies – either as ordinary photos, or printed on various types of merchandise.
Les Origines Du Roman Policier, a broadcast talk which Dorothy L Sayers was planning to give in 1940, has been translated by Society member Suzanne Bray, and published by the Society with an extensive introduction and notes. It is now available for purchase direct from us – see this page for full details.
Credit card payment is available online for membership subscriptions and for some other items. Please see here for the options which are available for new and existing members for payment of subscriptions.