Whispering Gallery, Issue 169

Lymond is 500! Impossible to believe, I know, but we have it on the authority of the papers Leonard Bailey shows Lymond and Philippa in The Ringed Castle (Pt 2, Ch 11) that our hero was born on 1st November 1526.

In this issue of Whispering Gallery, published in March 2026, we commence our celebratory year with an overview of the events of 1526, a talk from the Dunnett archive in which our author reviewed The Lymond Chronicles, and we explore how the female characters can be said to drive the narrative of the novels.

Elsewhere in this issue, we have part 2 of our excellent series about the early maps and sea charts used by Lymond, Nicholas and Thorfinn, and we accompany Lymond and Strozzi on their spying mission around the streets of Calais. Our series on the priests and prophets who interact with the characters now looks at The House of Niccolò and the subject of predestination.

The reader events that took place around the world to mark last year’s International Dorothy Dunnett Day are shown in our annual IDDD photospread, and we learn how a young Venetian nun challenged the conventions of her time through her writing.

In addition, readers tell us which scenes they’d choose to film, and we see Lymond in Russia through the eyes of Alec Guthrie. Our Dunnett Lexicon continues to shed light on the words and colloquialisms our author employs, and we look at Dunnett’s translation of the beautiful poem, Tant que je vive, as well as another example of readers’ body art – the third we know of – inspired by the poem.

Contents

SOCIETY BUSINESS

• The Chair’s Column
• Trustees’ Notice Board
• Forthcoming Events
• Members’ Page

FEATURES

• ‘Under the Compulsion of Conscience’
• Priests and Prophets, part 3: The House of Niccolò
• What Happened in 1526?
• ‘The Lymond Novels’
• Preface to The Architects of Outcome
• The Architects of Outcome
• Commentary on The Architects of Outcome
• The Sin of Sybilla
• Mapping and Charting Lymond, Niccolò and Thorfinn, part 2

REGULARS

• Locating Scenes of Action in the Novels: Calais, part 2
• Among the Archives
• International Dorothy Dunnett Day Photospread
• A Dunnett Lexicon
• Talking Point
• The Lymond Lifeline
• That’s Relevant!
• A Close Read