Strong Poison

Strong Poison was the fifth Dorothy L Sayers crime novel to feature her aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. It stands out not just as a crucial turning point in her development of his character, giving him real emotional depth, but also sees her extending the range of what detective fiction could do. The novel opens in a courtroom with crime writer Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her former lover Philip Boyes by arsenic poisoning. The evidence against her is compelling, but it fails to convince Lord Peter who sets out to prove her innocence. John Yorke shows how this novel offers the reader far more than simply a puzzle to solve, and also the degree to which both the events in the book and the character of Harriet Vane are informed by Sayers’s own painful experiences as she tried to establish her life as a writer and independent woman in 1920s London.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.

Francesca Wade is a literary critic and biographer. She is the author of Square Hunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars (2020) and Gertrude Stein: an Afterlife (2025).

PD James archive clip taken from Open Book, BBC Radio 4 – 25 April 2004

Reading from Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers (1930, Victor Gollancz Ltd.)

Reader: Emily Pithon
Music: Torquil MacLeod
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4