Amy Orr-Ewing on Dorothy Sayers, Part 3

[00:00:04] Welcome to Women Worth Knowing, the radio program and podcast

[00:00:08] hosted by Cheryl Brodersen and Robin Jones Gunn.

[00:00:13] Hello, this is Cheryl Brodersen, and I am missing Robin because I know she would enjoy

[00:00:18] these sessions that I've been able to interview Dr.

[00:00:24] Amy Orr-Ewing on the subject of the author, Dorothy Sayers.

[00:00:28] And why that's important, too, is because, as you know, Robin is also an author

[00:00:32] and has sold, I think it's six million books so far.

[00:00:37] I mean, amazing. So Robin, we are missing you terribly.

[00:00:40] She would love to be here, but she's recovering.

[00:00:44] But I wanted to say again, as you've heard me say just or Robin say just about every

[00:00:49] episode that we recognize that there are so many Christian women with fascinating

[00:00:55] stories. And we believe that your story is also fascinating and that your story is an

[00:01:01] important story to be told, just as the stories of missionaries, musicians, reformers,

[00:01:06] authors, wives, mothers, single women and.

[00:01:12] Any other category that I've missed are examples and inspirational to us all, we are

[00:01:19] on part three of Dorothy Sayers and, you know, Amy, I want to talk at the end of the

[00:01:24] program about your books.

[00:01:26] So after we finish with Dorothy, I want to talk because I think one of the reasons that

[00:01:31] you relate to Dorothy, not only because you live in Oxford now and she went to Oxford,

[00:01:37] but also because of the connection of being a writer and channeling thoughts and ideas

[00:01:45] and passions and concepts and doctrine into these books.

[00:01:49] So I want to talk about that at the end because your books are very, very, they're just

[00:01:55] so good. Amy Orr-Ewing is also a speaker.

[00:01:59] She's spoken at just many conferences.

[00:02:03] You've spoken.

[00:02:05] Just give me a real quick.

[00:02:08] It was something at Parliament, but what was it?

[00:02:10] Because it's a little bit.

[00:02:12] Yeah. So I've done a few things at Parliament, the National Prayer Breakfast, which is

[00:02:17] for MPs and peers right there in that main hall.

[00:02:22] Oh my goodness.

[00:02:23] Parliament. And I've spoken at the speakers rooms, which is where the Speaker of the

[00:02:28] House has his chambers and, you know, invited, they invite speakers in to come and give

[00:02:36] talks for the MPs there.

[00:02:38] And I've also spoken at the Christmas events for parliamentarians in the chapel, which

[00:02:44] is right there under the Parliament.

[00:02:45] So, yeah.

[00:02:46] You know, I love that you're willing to go through whatever open door that the Lord

[00:02:51] opens for you to share.

[00:02:54] You know, I've watched a lot of your the videos on YouTube that are available, too.

[00:02:58] And I just love them.

[00:03:00] I'm just like so proud of you.

[00:03:01] I'm like, I know her.

[00:03:03] And, you know, and I also found myself, you know, because I'm in private, I can shout

[00:03:06] hallelujah. Yes, yes, yes.

[00:03:09] And amen a few times.

[00:03:11] So also so for those of you listening, you can watch Dr.

[00:03:15] Amy Orr-Ewing. You can find her on YouTube and the videos there are fantastic.

[00:03:21] And it's some of the talks that she's given.

[00:03:23] And I'm always inspired when I listen to you and sit under.

[00:03:28] I was first introduced to you listening to you at Creation Fest in England, which we

[00:03:34] both love. But I want to we'll go we'll get into Dorothy Sayers and talk a little bit

[00:03:39] more about you at the end because so that's important, too.

[00:03:43] But so we were at the point.

[00:03:45] So if you listen to and you need to listen to part one, which is kind of the

[00:03:50] introduction to Dorothy and how brilliant she was as a child, her education at

[00:03:57] Oxford, then part two is, you know, it's the scandal, how she handled the scandal, the

[00:04:06] environment and atmosphere in which she lived and was able to write and how she

[00:04:13] chose really writing as the genre through which she would present the gospel.

[00:04:20] It was popular in plays as essays and also when she would speak publicly.

[00:04:27] And so there's so much more that you need to listen to in part two.

[00:04:30] But now we're at part three and she's in her 40s or 50s.

[00:04:35] Yeah, she's in her was she died in 1957.

[00:04:42] And so 64 years old.

[00:04:44] Right. Yeah.

[00:04:45] So only a year older than I am.

[00:04:47] So this is a little challenging.

[00:04:49] Yeah, no, she did.

[00:04:51] She first kind of got interested in Dante in her late 50s.

[00:04:57] Basically, she obviously had lived through the war.

[00:05:01] We talked about that.

[00:05:02] Let's talk a little bit about Dante because he's not a familiar name to many of our

[00:05:09] modern listeners.

[00:05:11] And why would he be?

[00:05:12] Yes.

[00:05:13] Well, I majored in English in college.

[00:05:16] So he's familiar to me or to anyone who's got kind of any type of higher education.

[00:05:24] He's mentioned quite a bit for he wrote in.

[00:05:29] So he's medieval, medieval writing in Italy.

[00:05:33] And he's famous for kind of three long poems.

[00:05:40] I mean, when you say they are a book.

[00:05:42] And that is right.

[00:05:43] Yes.

[00:05:44] But it's written in Italian verse and the first one is on hell.

[00:05:49] It's called the Inferno.

[00:05:51] The second one is called Purgatory.

[00:05:52] So it's a Catholic theology.

[00:05:55] And the third one is is Paradise about Heaven.

[00:05:59] And that's probably the mixture of not only the English, but also the theological background.

[00:06:05] Yeah.

[00:06:05] I've heard about Dante.

[00:06:07] Dante's Inferno.

[00:06:08] In fact, not a lot.

[00:06:09] He was quoted by a lot of pastors when they went to talk about hell.

[00:06:12] Yes.

[00:06:12] And if you want, if you go, if you ever go to Europe and kind of see, you know, those very old paintings in an Italian church, you'll see kind of seven circles of hell.

[00:06:23] You'll see.

[00:06:25] So he was quite famous for the very detailed description of the types of suffering that people will experience in hell.

[00:06:35] But because it was medieval Italian, a lot of the ideas that he wrote about some of the concepts were very much concepts of that time.

[00:06:47] Yes.

[00:06:47] And very philosophical.

[00:06:49] Right.

[00:06:49] And the Italian was pretty archaic.

[00:06:51] Yeah.

[00:06:51] A lot of people did not understand.

[00:06:54] So Dante had been translated into English, but it was, it didn't make a lot of, it didn't have a lot of clarity.

[00:07:04] Yeah.

[00:07:04] So it would be like reading, it would be like an Italian person reading Shakespeare.

[00:07:11] Yes.

[00:07:11] You know.

[00:07:12] Yes.

[00:07:13] Translated into Italian.

[00:07:14] So there were translations of Dante.

[00:07:17] But what Sayers did was because she'd studied modern languages at university, she had some Italian.

[00:07:24] She fell in love with Dante's language and his world really.

[00:07:33] And she decided to set about translating Dante for Penguin in a way that more ordinary people could actually find accessible.

[00:07:46] I mean, if you pick it up today, it's still pretty tricky to engage with.

[00:07:51] It's not easy.

[00:07:52] But more people have read Dante in the English language since Sayers translated it for Penguin than in all the translations.

[00:08:01] Okay.

[00:08:02] So Penguin is not familiar to a lot of the American listeners.

[00:08:07] So Penguin is a book company that pretty much, I mean, they did the Lady books.

[00:08:12] They're pretty much a very...

[00:08:14] Like a paperback that every mass produced.

[00:08:17] Right.

[00:08:17] Mass produced.

[00:08:18] Very popular publishing agency in England.

[00:08:21] Yeah.

[00:08:22] It would be like Harper Rowe or yeah, more like Harper Rowe and kind of Harlequin.

[00:08:28] The ones in the United States, the equivalent to Penguin.

[00:08:32] And so it just meant that she said she translates Dante having had this incredible career, award winning kind of best selling detective fiction writer alongside Agatha Christie, you know, playwright who fills cathedrals and smashes, you know, all the records of broadcasting for the BBC.

[00:08:55] Then she's doing essays and theological writing.

[00:08:59] And then she turns her hand to translating Dante and millions and millions and millions of people read it.

[00:09:06] And if you think about the Dante's kind of vision of hell and the fire and just the horror of evil, somehow that resonated after the Second World War as people coming to terms with the reality of the Holocaust.

[00:09:25] And there is evil.

[00:09:26] People have experienced fire bombs dropping on their homes and their cities for, you know, for the pursuit of a madman's ideal.

[00:09:37] So you can kind of imagine why this resonated.

[00:09:44] And then the poem kind of goes through this idea of purgatory.

[00:09:47] But then paradise is just this vision of beauty and goodness, which is very, very compelling and kind of, I guess, was a bridge for sayers to introduce people to the goodness of the gospel as well.

[00:10:04] So she only completed the...

[00:10:07] She started the Paradise One and then it was published after her death.

[00:10:13] This morning.

[00:10:14] And somebody else finished it.

[00:10:16] Yes, there's a lady called Barbara Reynolds who was involved, who then wrote a biography of her as well and compiled her letters.

[00:10:24] OK, and we've got to talk more about that in just a moment.

[00:10:27] So she's writing these now sometime during this.

[00:10:32] Was this after her husband died?

[00:10:34] Yes.

[00:10:35] Yeah.

[00:10:35] So that was that was part of the impetus, too.

[00:10:38] I mean, I don't know that she would have had the freedom to really be passionate if he was alive.

[00:10:44] She did still manage to write lots of things when he was alive.

[00:10:48] But did they live separately, too?

[00:10:51] Well, they had a place in London and in Whittam.

[00:10:54] So, no, they didn't formally separate.

[00:10:57] And she was caring for him.

[00:11:03] That's right.

[00:11:03] It was a big, it was a domestic ordeal trying to take care of him.

[00:11:09] So they didn't formally separate.

[00:11:11] But she did get away quite a bit.

[00:11:15] And and and right.

[00:11:17] So once he had died, I think that was a kind of weight in a way off of her, off of her mind.

[00:11:25] But she was prolific through her whole life, through all the ups and downs.

[00:11:31] Somehow she was able to produce amazing.

[00:11:35] I mean, it is pure genius because she also tried to keep the rhythm.

[00:11:40] Yeah.

[00:11:41] I mean, it's one thing to translate a poem.

[00:11:45] For instance, I think of the hymn How Great Thou Art.

[00:11:48] Yeah.

[00:11:49] And it was first written.

[00:11:50] Is it Swedish?

[00:11:52] Yeah.

[00:11:52] And we translated it.

[00:11:54] And yet or even something like A Mighty Fortress is Our God, which was written by Luther in German.

[00:12:02] And to take, you know, something those concepts one to translate the concept to or to get the dynamic equivalent.

[00:12:11] Yeah.

[00:12:12] Two, to get the rhythm.

[00:12:14] And of course, then we for those to get rhyme to work with that.

[00:12:19] And there were those who said some of Dante of her translation was forced.

[00:12:23] Yes.

[00:12:23] Because it would have to be.

[00:12:25] Exactly.

[00:12:25] No, that's the slightly controversial thing she tried to do was to keep it rhyming.

[00:12:31] And some people hated that.

[00:12:33] But I think there is in so there were,

[00:12:36] I think that takes pure genius.

[00:12:37] Yeah, me too.

[00:12:38] And I think there was a bit of misogyny in some of the negative reviewing.

[00:12:42] Yes.

[00:12:42] Because there was a high level of annoyance that this woman who's not even an academic Italian medieval scholar, who set her mind to this and just

[00:12:54] has been able to do what we could not do.

[00:12:57] Exactly.

[00:12:57] And two, because I remember reading one of her biographies that when she pitched it to the publisher at Penguin, that she began to act it out.

[00:13:09] And because she felt it and she felt like she understood Dante as no one else had.

[00:13:15] Yeah.

[00:13:15] That, you know,

[00:13:17] She described it as a love affair.

[00:13:19] Yes.

[00:13:20] In a way.

[00:13:20] I mean, it was it's quite overwhelming.

[00:13:24] Well, she it was almost as if she received the key to unlock it and to understand what he was saying.

[00:13:34] He's genius as well.

[00:13:35] Right.

[00:13:35] And where he was going, you know, this is this is his motivation.

[00:13:39] This is his purpose.

[00:13:41] And the publisher I heard at Penguin not having her intellect was overawed.

[00:13:48] Like, oh, my goodness.

[00:13:49] Yes.

[00:13:49] Let's do this.

[00:13:51] I don't think they quite realized what they took on, but they definitely cashed in.

[00:13:55] I mean, you know, Penguin being, you know, when you think of the things that Penguin would have been producing and to take on a work like Dante, which is so high brow.

[00:14:07] Yes.

[00:14:08] Exactly.

[00:14:08] I mean, they did.

[00:14:09] They definitely did versions of like English literature.

[00:14:11] Yes.

[00:14:12] But yes.

[00:14:13] Yeah.

[00:14:13] Nothing along quite like that.

[00:14:16] Dante.

[00:14:16] Right.

[00:14:17] And but I heard that other publishers weren't interested again because of the the daunting.

[00:14:26] I hate to say daunting Dante, but that's pretty much the reality of it.

[00:14:31] Absolutely.

[00:14:32] So she said herself, how long did it take her?

[00:14:34] Do you know?

[00:14:34] Did you the first?

[00:14:37] Because Dante itself is very long.

[00:14:38] Yeah.

[00:14:39] Yeah.

[00:14:39] I mean, not as long as you would think, because she she worked on it, I think, for a couple of years.

[00:14:48] Obviously, there's a there's the time of doing the actual translation and then the lag to actually get it out and published.

[00:14:54] So we're not talking about a lot of years now.

[00:14:59] But that's amazing.

[00:15:00] Yeah, it really is.

[00:15:02] And then obviously she broke it down into the three that he'd broken it down into.

[00:15:07] So she's working on it over the course of a decade.

[00:15:09] But yeah.

[00:15:11] All right.

[00:15:11] So tell me a little bit.

[00:15:13] And now she died suddenly.

[00:15:15] Yes, she died in 1957 in December.

[00:15:20] She was found at the bottom of her stairs.

[00:15:25] And it was unexpected.

[00:15:29] But she was, you know, there wasn't a sort of particular ailment that it's not like she knew she had cancer or something like that.

[00:15:39] But she had obviously had suffered in her life and had gone through the war and all the stresses of her emotional life as well.

[00:15:50] And as you mentioned, she was unexpected, but she was quite overweight.

[00:15:54] Yeah, she was really overweight.

[00:15:56] And she did sort of have ailments, you know, and complained of her various ailments.

[00:16:01] So I don't think anyone knew of anything terminal.

[00:16:06] But, you know, she wasn't in great health for the last five years or so.

[00:16:13] OK, so where was she buried?

[00:16:15] If we wanted to go to if we had to visit England, where would we see her grave?

[00:16:20] It's in Whittam, which is where her last home was.

[00:16:27] She's in Sussex.

[00:16:29] I haven't been to the churchyard or anything and actually seen the grave.

[00:16:32] We'll have to go next time.

[00:16:33] Yeah.

[00:16:34] I'm going to call you up.

[00:16:34] Blue plaque.

[00:16:36] So, you know, in England where famous people have lived, she's got a couple.

[00:16:40] So there where she was when she died, but also in Oxford where she was born opposite Christ Church.

[00:16:47] There's a blue plaque there to mark her birthplace, too.

[00:16:51] So now what did they was she ever recognised like posthumously after her death?

[00:17:00] I'm just going to posthumously.

[00:17:02] Thank you.

[00:17:05] I mean, was the recognition after her death greater than before or did it diminish?

[00:17:11] I think it diminished.

[00:17:12] I think the public recognition of her work was expressed through people buying her books and showing up to listen to her.

[00:17:24] And she, you know, like collections of her letters were published.

[00:17:28] So Barbara Reynolds put out those five volumes of published letters.

[00:17:32] And then there are many, many unpublished letters as well.

[00:17:36] But as I mentioned, I think in the first episode of this conversation, she was not kind of written about a lot.

[00:17:48] There aren't a lot of biographies of her life.

[00:17:51] Didn't she have something that she didn't want a biography?

[00:17:55] Well, yeah.

[00:17:56] Until she had lived.

[00:17:58] She didn't like the fact that often people in public life have the personal aspects of their life obsessed over rather than the actual work.

[00:18:07] She had this very strong sense that the work will speak for itself.

[00:18:11] And that's how you feel about her, too.

[00:18:13] Yeah, exactly.

[00:18:14] Yeah.

[00:18:14] So I would say I'm kind of less knowledgeable about, you know, details of her life on the domestic sphere, say, and more familiar with her work.

[00:18:28] And that's partly because that's what she wanted.

[00:18:31] Exactly.

[00:18:32] It's quite interesting, isn't it?

[00:18:33] It is.

[00:18:35] But I do wonder whether that is also because of the baby born out of wedlock, which was just such a massive social stigma in those days.

[00:18:47] And for a woman, an intellectual woman to be hiding that secret.

[00:18:52] But also, I think as a woman, you want to be recognized for your work and not for your gender.

[00:18:59] Yes.

[00:18:59] And not be pigeonholed.

[00:19:02] As she says in Are Women Human?

[00:19:05] Not to be like, oh, those dear women.

[00:19:07] Yes, exactly.

[00:19:09] God bless them.

[00:19:10] Yes.

[00:19:10] The ladies, God bless them.

[00:19:12] Exactly.

[00:19:12] No.

[00:19:13] And then she said in that essay, she says, you know, talking about education for women, why people ask me, why would a woman want to learn about Aristotle?

[00:19:25] And she says, well, why shouldn't a woman learn about Aristotle?

[00:19:30] I want to learn about him and I see no reason in my bodily functions that should prevent me from knowing about him.

[00:19:38] So she had this kind of very highly practical sense as well of the work matters and people are interested in what they're interested in and just let them be free.

[00:19:49] So that brings us to you as an authorist, because again, you have written books.

[00:19:59] Why Trust the Bible?

[00:20:01] Where is God?

[00:20:02] In All the Suffering.

[00:20:03] In All the Suffering.

[00:20:04] It's the word all, which is just so poignant.

[00:20:09] And then also you just wrote Mary's Voice, which is excellent.

[00:20:14] And then you have another book that's coming out in August.

[00:20:17] I have a book coming out August 2024 called Lead Like the Real You.

[00:20:23] And it's a series of letters written to younger women.

[00:20:29] The initial idea was actually...

[00:20:31] I can't wait.

[00:20:32] Yeah.

[00:20:32] I'm very excited.

[00:20:33] So the initial idea was this sense that so many women long for a mentor and ask to be mentored.

[00:20:43] And the question kind of occurred to me, what would I wish I had known or someone could have shared with me or warned me or encouraged me with 10, 15, 20 years ago?

[00:20:56] So drawing on 25 years of ministry as a pastor's wife, as a speaker and author and theologian myself.

[00:21:05] And a mother.

[00:21:06] Yeah.

[00:21:06] And a mother.

[00:21:07] Three boys.

[00:21:08] Yes.

[00:21:09] So a series of letters written with that in mind.

[00:21:15] Do you think that the fact that you also are highly educated, that you have this love of the Lord and knowledge is part of why you related so much to Dorothy Sears?

[00:21:32] I think possibly.

[00:21:34] Yeah, I think I recognised in her a woman who had interests that I guess perhaps go against the flow of sometimes what the expectations are of Christian women.

[00:21:49] I think they're unfair expectations.

[00:21:52] I think there are many, many Christian women who have a vast array of interests and gifts.

[00:21:57] And I saw Inse as someone who had what it took to break through some of those norms and really serve the Lord in her generation.

[00:22:10] And to do it in a way that she wasn't seeking acclaim, she wasn't seeking praise, she wasn't even really seeking anyone saying thank you to her.

[00:22:19] It was a question of faithfulness and serving Christ with what was in her hand.

[00:22:25] Exactly.

[00:22:26] And it was a unique call.

[00:22:27] Yeah.

[00:22:28] You know, because we were used to women being missionaries or reformers, you know, going into prisons and ministering to the poor, to the lost, but not to enter the field of writing or the public.

[00:22:44] The public space.

[00:22:45] Yes.

[00:22:46] Or engaging with leading thinkers who are against Christ and actually persuading them to consider the case for Christianity.

[00:22:54] Obviously, that really appealed to me because that's something, you know, I've been involved in doing.

[00:22:57] You're an apologist.

[00:22:58] Yes.

[00:22:59] I love that.

[00:23:00] Yes.

[00:23:00] Which brings up again, Why Trust the Bible?

[00:23:02] Which is an excellent book.

[00:23:05] Brian said he thought it was the best book ever written on that subject.

[00:23:10] And we have read just about every book written on the trustworthiness of the Bible, which is, I think, something that every Christian needs to know.

[00:23:20] Yeah.

[00:23:20] So that book is set out as 10 chapters and each address specific questions people have about the Bible.

[00:23:30] Questions like, you know, why should we believe the Bible if a group of men just got together and decided what's going to be in it?

[00:23:38] You know, can we believe anything in history at all?

[00:23:43] Why should we believe the Bible?

[00:23:45] It's all lost in the annals of time.

[00:23:48] Isn't the Bible sexist?

[00:23:50] Isn't the Bible out of date on sex?

[00:23:53] You know, what it teaches about sex.

[00:23:56] Or the kinds of questions like the one I find hardest or found hardest was, what about the wars in the Old Testament?

[00:24:03] So how can we read the Bible when God commands the killing of people?

[00:24:08] So, yeah, questions that as Christians we might struggle with too.

[00:24:12] Yeah.

[00:24:12] And we need...

[00:24:13] That's what that book is about.

[00:24:14] Right.

[00:24:14] We need the answers to those questions.

[00:24:16] You know, I read Christopher Wright's The God I Can't Understand, which is along the same lines.

[00:24:20] But yours was a little bit more compelling.

[00:24:22] I love it.

[00:24:23] I love Christopher Wright, you know.

[00:24:25] But it was so compelling.

[00:24:27] And I do think that connection of author to author being called to something that has been for the most part dominated by men.

[00:24:38] And I don't think that, you know, I think there was Deborah amongst quite a few male judges in the Bible.

[00:24:48] But there was Deborah.

[00:24:49] There was.

[00:24:49] There was a Deborah.

[00:24:51] She led her people out to war.

[00:24:53] And she was one of the best judges.

[00:24:55] She was.

[00:24:56] One of the ones with the most integrity.

[00:24:57] We want to thank you again for joining us on I Know I Was Fascinated with this three part series on Dorothy Sears.

[00:25:04] Hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did, which would be a lot.

[00:25:10] Thank you for listening to Women Worth Knowing with Cheryl Brodersen and Robin Jones-Gunn.

[00:25:15] For more information on Cheryl, visit CherylBrodersen.com or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

[00:25:21] For more information on Robin, visit RobinGunn.com or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

[00:25:26] Join us each week for a lively conversation as we explore the lives of well-known and not so well-known historical and contemporary Christian women.

[00:25:35] If you think there is a woman worth knowing, we'd love to hear from you.

[00:25:38] Email us at WWK at CCCM.com.

[00:25:44] We hope you've enjoyed today's episode.

[00:25:46] Make sure you rate us on your podcast app, subscribe and share it with a friend.

[00:25:50] Thank you again for listening to Women Worth Knowing with Cheryl Brodersen and Robin Jones-Gunn.

[00:25:55] Women Worth Knowing is a production of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.