Lord Peter Death[a] Bredon Wimsey DSO (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh).

He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.

Born in 1890 and ageing in real time, Wimsey is described as being of average height, with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face.

Reputedly his looks are patterned after those of academic and poet Roy Ridley,[1] whom Sayers briefly met after witnessing him read his Newdigate Prize-winning poem "Oxford" at the Encaenia ceremony in July 1913.

Wimsey also possesses considerable intelligence and athletic ability, evidenced by his playing cricket for Oxford University while taking a First in history (referred to in Gaudy Night).

The family coat of arms, first mentioned in Gaudy Night, is "Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat couched as to spring, proper".

In his youth, Peter was influenced by his maternal uncle, Paul Delagardie, who took it upon himself to instruct his nephew in the facts of life – how to conduct various love affairs and treat his lovers.

For reasons never clarified, after the end of his spy mission, Wimsey in the later part of the war moved from Intelligence and resumed the role of a regular line officer.

He was a conscientious and effective commanding officer, popular with the men under his command—an affection still retained by Wimsey's former soldiers many years after the war, as is evident from a short passage in Clouds of Witness and an extensive reminiscence in Gaudy Night.

He suffered a breakdown due to shell shock (which we now call post-traumatic stress disorder but which was then often thought, by those without first-hand experience of it, to be a species of malingering) and was eventually sent home.

In the reissue of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1935), the biography of Wimsey is "brought up to date" by his uncle, Paul Austin Delagardie, purportedly at the request of Sayers herself, further giving the illusion that he is a real person.

In Clouds of Witness (1926), Wimsey travels to the fictional Riddlesdale in North Yorkshire to assist his elder brother Gerald, who has been accused of murdering Captain Denis Cathcart, their sister's fiancé.

Wimsey's highly effective idea is that a male detective going around and asking questions is likely to arouse suspicion, while a middle-aged woman doing it would be dismissed as a gossip and people would speak openly to her.

As recounted in the short story "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba", in December 1927 Wimsey fakes his own death, supposedly while hunting big game in Tanganyika, to penetrate and break up a particularly dangerous and well-organised criminal gang.

This part of his life remains hazy: it is hardly ever mentioned in the books set in the same period; most of the scant information on the subject is given in flashbacks from later times, after he meets Harriet Vane and relations with other women become a closed chapter.

There are several references to a relationship with a famous Viennese opera singer, and Bunter—who evidently was involved with this, as with other parts of his master's life—recalls Wimsey being very angry with a French mistress who mistreated her own servant.

The only one of Wimsey's earlier women to appear in person is the artist Marjorie Phelps, who plays an important role in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.

[5] In Strong Poison Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former lover in December 1929.

Lord Peter encourages his friend and foil, Chief Inspector Charles Parker, to propose to his sister, Lady Mary Wimsey, despite the great difference in their rank and wealth.

The couple marry on 8 October 1935, at St Cross Church, Oxford, as depicted in the opening collection of letters and diary entries in Busman's Honeymoon.

The papers also incidentally show that in addition to his thorough knowledge of the classics of English literature, Wimsey is familiar — though in fundamental disagreement — with the works of Karl Marx, and well able to debate with Marxists on their home ground.

The story is set in a quiet rural environment, the war at that time devastating Europe received only a single oblique reference, and the case Wimsey undertakes is just to clear his young son of the false accusation of stealing fruit from the neighbour's tree.

In the continuations Thrones, Dominations (1998), A Presumption of Death (2002), The Attenbury Emeralds (2010), and The Late Scholar (2014), Harriet lives with the children at Talboys, Wimsey and Bunter have returned successfully from their secret mission in 1940, and his nephew Lord St. George is killed while serving as an RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain.

"[8] In "The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran", the staunchly democratic Dr. Hartman invites Bunter to sit down to eat together with himself and Wimsey, at the doctor's modest apartment.

Wimsey was played by Ian Carmichael, with Bunter being played by Glyn Houston (with Derek Newark stepping in for The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club), in a series of separate serials under the umbrella title Lord Peter Wimsey, that ran between 1972 and 1975, adapting five novels (Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors).

Edward Petherbridge played Lord Peter for BBC Television in 1987, in which three of the four major Wimsey/Vane novels (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night) were dramatised under the umbrella title A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery.

An adaptation of the short story "The Footsteps That Ran" dramatised by John Cheatle appeared on the BBC Home Service in November 1939 with Cecil Trouncer as Wimsey.

[14] The short story "The Man with No Face" was dramatised by Audrey Lucas for the Home Service Saturday-Night Theatre play, broadcast on 3 April 1943 with Robert Holmes in the lead role.

In the original series 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.

[18] With year of first publication In addition there are Lord Peter Wimsey has also been included by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer as a member of the Wold Newton family.