Those familiar with the formidable Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, the suave, multi-talented amateur sleuth of book and TV fame, might be surprised to know that Sayers pioneered the depiction of Jesus in dramatic form. Her 12-play radio cycle, The Man Born to be King, is 75 years old this December.
In 1941 the presumption of “personifying the godhead”, now taken almost for granted (for instance, in Jesus Christ Superstar), was something of an outrage. Some listeners complained that such blasphemies caused the fall of Singapore; others said that if the plays weren’t taken off the air the same fate would befall Australia. But the Lord Chamberlain had no objection provided no audience was present: without the visible impersonation by an actor of the Saviour, Sayers’s plays were safe.
