The Man Born to Be King by Dorothy L. Sayers, 0575003669, Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

Stunning

Even after 65 years this book is a stunner. Gutsy, intelligent and utterly readable. Sayers is brilliant - both in the plays she has written and in her very engaging introduction to the book. Read it!

Everyday Christianity

I agree with the preceding review, and want to add my comment on the sheer uniqueness of Dorothy Sayers' work. She gives such a down-to-earth and textured view of not only the events but the characters and the thinking behind the characters. Thus she has a very good stab at trying to understand why Judas acted as he did, and her Jesus is tender and humorous and believable. The first play about Herod is superb and again she portrays this enemy of Jesus in a way that makes us understand them as people and not just copy-book villains. I wish someone would actually perform the plays as they are still very contemporary and yet reverent.

SayersÃ½ comments & text of the Radio play about Jesus

This book contains the 12 part radio play Sayers' wrote for the BBC, broadcast from December 1941 to October 1942. It contains an introduction by J. W. Welch, one of the Directors of the BBC, who gives us details of how these plays were originally received by the public and the problems they had getting them produced. It also contains Sayers' notes to the producer, comments and explanations on all the characters for each play; each play has its own notes and comments that set the scene. Each of the notes and comments are lucid explanations of how the actors were to see their parts. That they were to play them as ordinary people, to whom the events actually occurred and so that they would react as normal people do. The language was to be modern, even vulgar English where necessary.

All of which made me wish that I had heard the original broadcasts or at least that they could be repeated. Even so, it is a real privilege to be able to at least read them They are written so that the ordinary person can appreciate the reality of the story. Even if you do not believe in the Christian Claim they at least try to make us see Jesus Christ as a real person with the events of his life acted out as they were lived and, in using modern language, we can perceive the events as being realistic, at the very least.

I would highly recommend this book to any Sayers' fan and have it as a must read for any Christian interested in the story of Jesus as he really must have lived.

Sayers has a talent for language that allows her to translate such things as the Bible or Dante's Divine Comedy so that the average reader can readily understand the texts and show them as having relevance to our lives and our world. In this book it is superbly demonstrated. It is one of my "Desert Island" books.

View more reviews or product details from Amazon.co.uk