Dorothy L Sayers and ‘The Man Born to be King’

Dorothy L Sayers is best known for her detective novels, but she also wrote a controversial radio play about the life of Christ, broadcast on the BBC at the height of the Second World War. In The Man Born to be King listeners encountered Christ as never before, an immediate and real presence: it shocked and transfixed a generation, and C.S. Lewis used it as his Lent reading every year afterwards.

Michael Hampel will talk about Sayers’ life and the enduring resonance of the play, and also explore her fascinating theology of creativity, which connects the doctrine of the Trinity with the process of creating, making and sharing new things. Michael Hampel is the Canon Precentor at St Paul’s, responsible for music and liturgy at the cathedral. He has acted and directed amateur theatre most of his life, and has conducted extensive research into the life and works of Dorothy L Sayers.