Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a
fictional character in a series of
detective novels and short stories by
Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries — usually murder mysteries. The novels have a setting contemporary to when they were written, from the early
1920s to the late
1930s; the story "Talboys" (and
Jill Paton Walsh's recent continuations
Thrones, Dominations and
A Presumption of Death) continue this into the early
1940s.
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Roy Ridley, whose appearance Dorothy L. Sayers used for Lord Peter Wimsey |
Wimsey is described as a man in early middle age, of at best average height with straw-colored hair and a vaguely foolish face (reputedly his looks were patterned after academic
Roy Ridley), though he also possessed considerable athletic ability, especially at
cricket. Sayers peppered the Wimsey stories with many locations and details from her own life, with her hero's abundant wealth being in contrast to the penury that led her to try her hand at detective fiction. Wimsey's London home is at 110A
Piccadilly,
W1, from which he moves upon his marriage to a townhouse on Audley Square, in the heart of
Mayfair. The ancestral home of the
Wimsey family is Bredon Hall, Duke's Denver,
Norfolk. The 'original' Denver is a village on the
A10 near
Downham Market in the west of the county; Duke's Denver (fictional like the dukedom it gives its name to) lies some fifteen miles beyond.
The fictional Lord Peter's life begins in
1890. He is the younger son of Mortimer, 15th Duke of Denver, and his relict, Honoria Lucasta, who lives on throughout the novels as
Dowager Duchess. His two siblings, Gerald, 16th Duke, and Lady Mary both feature in the novels, as does Gerald's snobbish wife, Helen, and devil-may-care heir, Viscount St. George. Mary eventually marries Peter's friend, Chief Inspector Charles Parker of
Scotland Yard, several years after the two first meet (after her fiancé dies violently in
Clouds of Witness, a crime for which Gerald stands trial in the
House of Lords).
Lord Peter was educated at
Eton College and
Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a
first-class degree in history. He served in
World War I, suffering
shell shock, which causes occasional problems throughout the books, especially the earliest ones. His biography is given in a
Who's Who or
Debrett-like entry in the rear of each book, supplemented in later books, and in subsequent reprintings of the earlier novels, by a short biographical essay, said to be the work of Peter's uncle Paul Austin Delagardie, the brother of the Dowager Duchess. The same
Who's Who article is consulted by Miss Meteyard in
Murder Must Advertise when she begins to suspect that new copywriter Mr. Bredon is not just the bumbling oaf he pretends to be.
He first met his trusty right-hand man and
valet (or manservant or gentleman's personal gentleman),
Mervyn Bunter, when Bunter served as his
batman in the Great War. Bunter is a man of as many talents as Lord Peter, not least
photography which often proves instrumental for Peter's investigations. When Bunter finally finds a wife, in
Thrones, Dominations (a plot device created not by Dorothy Sayers, but by Jill Paton Walsh), she is a professional photographer; their son Peter Meredith Bunter is born in December
1937. During
World War II, where Lord Peter serves in military intelligence, and his nephew St. George is a fighter pilot, Bunter, too old for regular service, founds a
Home Guard battalion. Bunter's ability to ingratiate himself with servants and tradesmen often results in important leads for his master's cases. Likewise, Wimsey retains the services of Miss Climpson's undercover employment agency for women in order to be able to garner information from the demi monde of spinsters and widows which neither master or man would be able to access (see especially
Strong Poison and
Unnatural Death). The novels also feature multiple appearances from solicitor Murbles, newshound Salcombe Hardy, and city whizz The Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, who finds himself entangled in the case in the first of the Wimsey books, 1923's
Whose Body?.
In
Strong Poison Lord Peter meets
Harriet Deborah Vane and falls in love with her. Harriet is a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer on trial for the murder of her former lover. Needless to say, Wimsey saves her from the gallows, and after many many proposals of marriage throughout
Strong Poison and
Have His Carcase, Vane finally accepts Peter's proposal in
Gaudy Night. The couple marry, on
October 8 1935, at St. Cross Church, Holywell,
Oxford, depicted in the opening collection of letters and diary entries in
Busman's Honeymoon. The Wimseys go off on honeymoon to Talboys, a house in east
Hertfordshire near to where the young Harriet's father was a country doctor, and which she has loved from childhood, and which Peter has bought for her as a wedding present. There, they find the body of the previous owner, and spend their honeymoon solving the case, thus having the eponymous busman's honeymoon (see
busman's holiday).
The Wimseys have three children: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936 in the story "The Haunted Policeman" and featured in the
1942 story "Talboys"); Roger Wimsey (born
1938), and Paul Wimsey (born
1940). Note that in
A Presumption of Death the second son is called Paul, because in the wartime publications of
The Wimsey Papers Dorothy L. Sayers called him that.
Among Lord Peter's hobbies, apart from criminology, is collecting
incunabula. He is an expert on matters of food (especially wine) and male fashion, as well as on classical music. He is quite good at playing
Bach's works for keyboard instruments on a piano he babies even more than his books, wines, and cars. One of Lord Peter's cars is a 12-cylinder ("double-six")
1927 Daimler four-seater, which he calls "Mrs. Merdle" after a character
Charles Dickens's
Little Dorrit.
Novels
with year of first publication
Whose Body?,
1923Clouds of Witness,
1926 (Carmichael tv movie)
Unnatural Death,
1927The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club,
1928 (Carmichael tv movie)
Strong Poison,
1931 (Petherbridge tv movie)
Five Red Herrings,
1931 (Carmichael tv movie)
Have His Carcase,
1932 (Petherbridge tv movie)
Murder Must Advertise,
1933 (Carmichael tv movie)
The Nine Tailors,
1934 (Carmichael tv movie)
Gaudy Night,
1935 (Petherbridge tv movie)
Busman's Honeymoon,
1937 (Montgomery film)
Thrones, Dominations,
1998 (not finished by Sayers -- completed by Jill Paton Walsh)
A Presumption of Death,
2002 (written by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers)
Short story collections
Lord Peter Views the Body,
1928Hangman's Holiday,
1933 (also contains non-Wimsey stories)
In the Teeth of the Evidence,
1939 (also contains non-Wimsey stories)
Striding Folly,
1972Lord Peter,
1972 [
See this article for complete list of stories.]
The novel
Busman's Honeymoon was originally a stage play by Sayers and her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne.
Some of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels were made into two very successful
television series by the
BBC. Lord Peter Wimsey was played by
Ian Carmichael during the
1970s, in a series that ran from
1972 to
1975 and adapted five novels, and by
Edward Petherbridge in 1987, wherein the three major Wimsey/Vane novels were dramatized. Harriet was played by
Harriet Walter. The BBC was unable to secure the rights to turn Busman's Honeymoon into the fourth part of the series. Both series are now available on videotape and DVD.
Edward Petherbridge also played Wimsey in the UK production of the Busman's Honeymoon play staged at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1988 (it also toured in the North of England), with the role of Harriet being taken by his real life spouse,
Emily Richard.
Ian Carmichael also starred as Wimsey in radio adaptations of the novels made by the BBC, all of which have been available on cassette and CD from the
BBC Radio Collection. In the original series, which ran on
Radio 4 from
1973â€"
1983, no adaptation was made of the seminal
Gaudy Night, perhaps because the leading character in this novel is Harriet and not Peter; this was corrected in 2005 when a version specially recorded for the BBC Radio Collection was released starring Carmichael and Joanna David. The CD also includes a panel discussion on the novel, the major participants in which are
P. D. James and
Jill Paton Walsh.
There was a
1935 British movie of
The Silent Passenger in which Lord Peter solved a mystery on the boat train crossing the English Channel, but the film does not seem to be available on videotape, at least in the United States. Sayers disliked the film; James Brabazon describes it as an "oddity, in which Dorothy's contribution was altered out of all recognition."
The
1940 movie
The Haunted Honeymoon (US title) or
Busman's Honeymoon (UK title), starring
Robert Montgomery and
Constance Cummings as Lord and Lady Peter, is available on videotape in generic boxes on the secondary market. Any resemblance of its characters and events to those in
Busman's Honeymoon is more than coincidental but less than satisfactory to Sayers's fans; the film script simplifies the novel's plot a great deal. (In the TV adaptation of
Murder Must Advertise, a movie poster of Robert Montgomery is prominently visible on the wall in the secretaries' office.) Sayers refused even to see this movie.
*
The Wimsey Family (
1977) by
C. W. Scott-Giles ISBN 0-06-013998-6
*
Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook (
1981) by Elizabeth Ryan ISBN 0899190324
*
The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion (
2002) by Stephan P. Clarke ISBN 0892968508 published by The Dorothy L. Sayers Society.
*
Conundrums for the Long Week-End : England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey (
2000) by Robert Kuhn McGregor, Ethan Lewis ISBN 0873386655
As a footnote, Lord Peter Wimsey has also been included by the
science fiction writer
Philip José Farmer as a member of the
Wold Newton family; and
Laurie R. King's detective character
Mary Russell meets Lord Peter at a party in the novel
A Letter of Mary.
*
Lord Peter Wimsey chronology*
Classic Crime Fiction illustrated bibliography and articles about Dorothy L Sayers
*
Lord Peter Yahoo Group*
A Lord Peter and things English Blog*
Lord Peter Wimsey portrait at Balliol, Oxford*
Duke of Denver
