Lord Peter Wimsey - Dramatic Adaptations

Dramatic Adaptations

The novel Busman's Honeymoon was originally a stage play by Sayers and her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne.

Several Lord Peter Wimsey novels were made into television productions by the BBC, in two separate series. Lord Peter Wimsey was played by Ian Carmichael in a series of independent serials that ran from 1972 to 1975 and adapted five novels (Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors) and by Edward Petherbridge in 1987, in which three of the four major Wimsey/Vane novels (Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night) were dramatised. Harriet Vane was played by Harriet Walter. The BBC was unable to secure the rights to turn Busman's Honeymoon into a proposed fourth and last part of the planned 13-episode series, so the series was produced as ten episodes. The three adaptations were transmitted under the title A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery. Both the 1970s productions and the 1987 series are now available on videotape and DVD.

Edward Petherbridge also played Wimsey in the UK production of the Busman's Honeymoon play staged at the Lyric Hammersmith and on tour in 1988, with the role of Harriet being taken by his real-life spouse, Emily Richard.

Ian Carmichael starred as Wimsey in radio adaptations of the novels made by the BBC, all of which have been available on cassette and CD from the BBC Radio Collection. In the original series, which ran on Radio 4 from 1973–83, no adaptation was made of the seminal Gaudy Night, perhaps because the leading character in this novel is Harriet and not Peter; this was corrected in 2005 when a version specially recorded for the BBC Radio Collection was released starring Carmichael and Joanna David. The CD also includes a panel discussion on the novel, the major participants in which are P. D. James and Jill Paton Walsh. Gaudy Night was released as an unabridged audio book read by Ian Carmichael in 1993.

In 1935, British movie,The Silent Passenger, was released, in which Lord Peter (played by Peter Haddon) solved a mystery on the boat train crossing the English Channel. Sayers disliked the film and James Brabazon describes it as an "oddity, in which Dorothy's contribution was altered out of all recognition."

A 1940 film of Busman's Honeymoon or The Haunted Honeymoon (US title), starring Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings as Lord and Lady Peter was released but the characters and events bore little resemblance to Sayers' writing. Sayers refused even to see this movie.