In and Out of Course by Theodore Venables MA

Thanks to John Taylor & Co

Title: In and Out of Course

Author: Theodore Venables MA

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey #11)

The Reverend Theodore Venables, Rector of Fenchurch St Paul, sometime scholar of Caius College, Cambridge, is a considerable expert on bell ringing. His current parish has an experienced team of ringers who take on  long and complex peals (I think I have the terminology correct).

Lord Peter Wimsey is stranded in the Fenland on a freezing cold New Years Eve following an encounter with a ditch. By chance his host Mr Venables, has been planning a 9 hour peal to celebrate the new year, but one of his best bell ringers has been struck down with a nasty attack of flu. By further chance Lord Peter is an experienced ringer, albeit rather out of practice, and he is persuaded to act as a substitute.

The Nine Tailors is filled with all manner of bell ringing details which are, to be honest, much too like a maths lesson for my taste. And I am sure that Mr Venables’s erudite books on the subject would confuse my unmathematical brain even more.

Mr Venables has not only written An Inquiry into the Mathematical Theory of the In and Out of Course together with directions for Calling Bells into Rounds from any position in all the recognised Methods upon a new and Scientific Principle, but also Change-Ringing for Country Churches and also Fifty Short Touches of Grandsire Triples.

And if the car crash, the bell ringing, (the maths) and the flu is not enough plot for you, there’s a stolen emerald necklace to be retrieved, a mysterious corpse, an escaped convict, two bigamous marriages and a serious flood. Don’t go away!

Thanks to Wikipedia