Change Ringing in Literature and Television
The mystery novel The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers (1934) contains a great deal of information on change-ringing. Her fictional detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, demonstrates his skill at ringing, and the solution to the central puzzle of the book rests in part upon his knowledge of the patterns of change ringing.
Connie Willis, who frequently and overtly references Sayers in To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997), features bell ringers in her earlier novel Doomsday Book (1992); a group of American women led by a Mrs. Taylor frequently appears practising for or ringing both handbells and changes.
The British television series Midsomer Murders aired an episode in the fifth season on a series of murders within a bell-ringing team, in Ring Out Your Dead.
In the science-fiction novel Anathem by Neal Stephenson (2008) changes are rung in a cloistered monastery for mathematicians to signal different ceremonies.
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Famous quotes containing the words change, ringing, literature and/or television:
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then resumes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Poe gives the sense for the first time in America, that literature is serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“Addison DeWitt: Your next move, it seems to me, should be toward television.
Miss Caswell: Tell me this. Do they have auditions for television?
Addison DeWitt: That’s all television is, my dear. Nothing but auditions.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)