The Dorothy L Sayers Society

The Society is registered in England as a Charity, number 272120.
Our registered address is Gimsons, King’s Chase, Witham, Essex, CM8 1AX.

This Web Site

The photograph of Dorothy L Sayers on the biography page was taken by Howard Coster.

No unauthorised publication or copying, in whole or in part, of the contents of this web site is permitted. For permission to quote from these pages, or information about the use of the Wimsey crest, please write to legal@sayers.org.uk.

If you wish to link to this web site, you may do so, and you do not need to ask our permission first. We would be grateful if you could let us know you have done so, as we may want to link back to your site. We prefer wherever possible that links are to our home page (http://www.sayers.org.uk/), since we cannot guarantee that more specific addresses will always continue to work. Please do not attempt to embed our web site in a frame, or to link directly to any images: we reserve the right to employ technical measures to prevent such links working reliably.

Rights in the works of Dorothy L Sayers

We do not administer the rights in any of the published or unpublished works of Dorothy L Sayers, although we can often help put you in touch with the relevant agents: for further information, please write to info@sayers.org.uk.

Please note that all of her works, both published and unpublished, are still fully protected by copyright worldwide until at least 2027. Any statements you may see elsewhere to the contrary are incorrect, and your use or distribution of any works you obtain from these sources may be unlawful.

The only alleged exceptions we are aware of are Whose Body? in the USA, and several other books in Canada. However, these are only in the “public domain” in those specific countries, due to anomalies in their copyright laws which are not recognised as valid by most other countries. Any free e-books you may find may therefore not be lawfully downloaded by anybody outside those specific countries.

Other Copyright Matters

The Society publishes a number of books, periodicals and other items. The rights in most items, and any separately acknowledged articles in our periodicals and occasional papers, remain with the original author(s). We hold some other rights, notably in the compilation and layout of our periodicals, and the entirety of The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion, both in print and online.

We do not generally administer any rights we do not ourselves hold, but can usually help put you in touch: please write to info@sayers.org.uk.

External links

Whilst we take reasonable care to ensure the suitability and appropriateness of external links presented on our links page and elsewhere on this site, we are not responsible for the content of any pages which may be reached thereby, including (without limitation) any content which might be considered offensive or illegal, or which might contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to the security or integrity of computer systems. Visitors follow any external links entirely at their own risk.

Some product links on this site are provided in association with Amazon.co.uk.

Privacy

Personal information

On pages concerned with making credit card payments for goods or services, some basic personal contact information is collected for the purpose of fulfilling the orders placed.

Our payment provider (WorldPay) does of course also collect personal and financial information for the purpose of completing any payment, directly on their own secure web site. Some information regarding the transaction is notified to us by WorldPay, although this does not include any sensitive details of the payment instrument used (such as the credit/debit card number): this information is held only by WorldPay and the banks (theirs and yours).

If you are a member of the Society, or wish to have access to restricted resources (including the online Lord Peter Wimsey Companion), we collect and maintain basic contact details including name, address and email address. This information is used to administer membership and to monitor who has access to copyright material. Any details supplied are only accessible to authorised officers of the Society.

Cookies

Some areas of our web site, typically those which are open to members only or which involve online payments, use cookies to maintain a “session”. These cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information.

Please note that our use of cookies is not optional − you may choose to configure your browser to reject the cookies, but you will then not be able to use those areas of the web site. Other areas of the web site (typically those available to the general public) will continue to work normally.

Other information collected

Except as described above, we do not collect any personally identifying information about visitors to the site. In common with most web sites, the IP address and the “User-Agent” (product name) of the web browser being used are recorded, along with the URL of each page visited on our site. In some cases we will also record the immediate destination page URL of any external link followed, or the URL of the page from which you linked to our site. This information is never made available to any third party except in aggregate statistical form.

Email addresses

The use of any email address mentioned on this site for the purpose of unsolicited bulk or commercial email is strictly prohibited. Any such junk email will be treated as a serious abuse and reported to the service provider(s) of the responsible party or parties for action. Additionally, we reserve the right at our sole discretion to charge the sender, and/or any third party which has knowingly facilitated the transmission of such email, for our storage and processing at a rate not exceeding £500 per email. Use of any sayers.org.uk address shall be deemed to indicate your full acceptance of these terms.

Purchasing items from the Society

This section applies to all purchases from the Society, including membership subscriptions, whether made online or otherwise.

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, all contracts with the Society shall be governed by English law, and the English courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction in the event of any dispute.

In contracting with the Society for the purchase of goods or services you may have certain legal rights. If there is any conflict between your legal rights and the provisions in the rest of this section, your legal rights will take precedence.

We normally require payment at the time of placing an order. Until you have received an order confirmation email from us, there is no contract between us, even if your payment has been processed. Note that any email you receive from our payment provider (WorldPay) is a payment confirmation only, not an order confirmation.

WorldPay and, through them, your card issuer, may sometimes advise us to treat certain payments with extra caution. If they do this, we reserve the right at our sole discretion to make further enquiries before accepting your order, or to reject your order altogether. If we reject your order, we will give you a full refund, or, if possible, cancel the payment.
Reasons for increased caution may include: a mismatch between the postal address you supply to WorldPay and the billing address known to your card issuer; incorrectly responding or choosing not to respond to a password challenge given by your card issuer (eg. “MasterCard SecureCode” or “Verified by VISA”); or a mismatch between your card’s country of issue and the location from which you connect to our web site.
You are therefore advised to take care in completing the payment forms, to avoid delay. If you know in advance of any reasons why your payment might be flagged for extra scrutiny (eg. if you live in a different country from your card issuer), please use the “Special instructions” area of our payment page to tell us.

The prices we quote online and elsewhere for individual items are the prices for payment in cash or by Sterling cheque. When paying by any other method, whether online or otherwise, the prices may be higher. In the interests of transparency, this is described as a payment processing charge, but for the purposes of card scheme rules and similar non-statutory regulations, it is technically a cash discount.

Please note that under normal circumstances the payment processing charges (ie. the difference between the price paid and the discounted cash price) are not refundable, even if we agree to refund some or all of the rest of your payment. This is because our banks and payment providers do not normally refund their fees to us, and therefore we would be left out of pocket. As a small organisation, we hope you will understand that we cannot afford to swallow these fees as a normal cost of doing business. However, if the reason for the refund is something we have done wrong, we will of course refund everything you have paid. We will also refund the full amount if we are required to do so by law.

For the purpose of the Distance Selling Regulations and similar laws:

Unless otherwise specified, the supplier of all goods or services ordered and paid for through this web site is the Dorothy L Sayers Society, Registered Charity number 272120. Our postal address is Gimsons, King’s Chase, Witham, Essex, CM8 1AX.
The goods or services supplied are as described on this web site and in any email confirmation you receive.
The web payment page, prior to taking payment, shows a full breakdown of the amount to be paid, including shipping costs where appropriate and any payment processing charge. Subsequent emails will normally only show the total amount paid.
Our order fulfilment policy is to make no substitutions. If we are unable to supply the exact items ordered, we will contact you to discuss the matter. If you agree to an alternative, it will be supplied under a new separate contract, with the value of the original contract being applied as a credit. If there are no suitable alternatives, we will give you a full refund.
If you are in the EU and are a consumer within the meaning of the relevant legislation (normally, that you are a natural person, and are not making the purchase as part of any business or trade), then you have a right to cancel the contract within 7 working days of receiving goods or services, without giving a reason (for example, you may simply change your mind), and to receive a full refund. Please note, however:
- The right to cancel does not apply to tickets or reservations for an event (such as the Society Convention).
- Membership subscriptions are a contract for a service which begins as soon as you have received any associated item. In particular, once you have been given access to the LPWC or to downloadable PDF Bulletins, or have been sent any paper Bulletins, the contract can no longer be cancelled.
- Some other items are exempt (eg. personalised items, special orders, and most digital, audio or video media if you have broken any seals).
- We require you to return any goods to us in re-saleable condition and in good time, at your own expense.
- You are legally obliged to take reasonable care of the goods until they reach us. You may therefore wish to take out suitable shipping insurance.

If you order goods from us and you discover they are faulty or unfit for purpose within a reasonable time, we will offer you a replacement or a refund, at your option. We may ask you to return the original items (at our expense), so you must take reasonable care of them.

Unless we have made a mistake, we will not normally make any refunds except as stated above. If you have made a genuine accidental error, or there are other extenuating circumstances, please get in touch and we may be able to help, though we cannot promise to do so.

All refunds will be made by crediting to the original payment instrument (eg. credit or debit card).