Gerald's snobbish wife, Helen, who detests Wimsey, and their devil-may-care heir, Viscount St. George ( Wimsey's nephew, who likes him ), also make appearances in the novels, as does Lady Mary, the younger sister of the Duke and Lord Peter.

Suspecting Urquhart's story that he, not Boyes, is in line to inherit the considerable fortune of their senile great aunt, Wimsey sends Miss Climpson to get hold of the great-aunt ’ s will, which she does in a comic scene exposing the practices of fraudulent mediums.

Although he does say how much he had learned from Wimsey, this might be flattery ( Whose Body ).

Throughout the books, Bunter always takes care to address Wimsey as " My Lord ".

Bunter moved Wimsey to a London flat at 110A Piccadilly, W1, while Wimsey recovered.

", on such occasions Bunter would take care of Wimsey and tenderly put him to bed, and they would revert to being " Major Wimsey " and " Sergeant Bunter ".

The Wimsey Papers included a reference to Wimsey and Bunter setting out during the war on a secret mission of espionage in Europe.

Many episodes in the Wimsey books express a mild satire of the British class system, in particular in depicting the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter, the two of them clearly being the best and closest of friends, yet Bunter invariably punctilious in using " my lord " even when they are alone, and " his lordship " in company.

Wimsey and Bunter even mock the Jeeves and Wooster relationship.

" it is seen that when Wimsey is caught by a severe recurrence of his WWI shell-shock and nightmares, being taken care of by Bunter, the two of them revert to being " Major Wimsey " and " Sergeant Bunter ".

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

Whereupon Wimsey remarks: " Bunter likes me to know my place "

However, Sayers ' first reference to Le Fanu appears in an earlier Lord Peter Wimsey novel, The Nine Tailors ( 1934 ), where he is quoted directly ( from Wylder's Hand, in the opening to the seventh " part " of Chapter II and again in the opening to the second " part " of Chapter III ) and a mysterious letter is referred to ( first by Wimsey's valet, Mervyn Bunter ) as " written by a person of no inconsiderable literary ability, who had studied the works of Sheridan Lefanu and was, if I may be permitted the expression, bats in the belfry, my lord.

In 1975, an adaptation starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey and with Peter Jones as Bunter, was made for BBC Radio 4.

In contrast, Bunter ( Wimsey's valet ) plays a smaller role in this than in other Wimsey novels.

* Mervyn Bunter, created in 1923 by Dorothy L. Sayers in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, likewise a paragon of discreet competence, taking his duties beyond what was expected of a valet to help his master.

As a boy, the young Peter Wimsey was, to the great distress of his father, strongly attached to an old, smelly poacher living at the edge of the family estate.

Emerging victorious after more than a year masquerading as " the disgruntled sacked servant Rogers ", Wimsey remarked that " We shall have an awful time with the lawyers, proving that I am me.

In How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers wrote:

" There is, however, no verifiable evidence of any such World War I lover of Sayers on whom the character of Wimsey might be based.

"' I never knew any Trinity men ,' said Wimsey.

"' I never knew any Trinity men ,' said Wimsey.

Bunter helps Wimsey solve the crossword problem and find the missing will-" Bunter, I ’ d like to double your salary, but I suppose you ’ d take it as an insult.

Janet Hitchman, in the preface to " Striding Folly ", remarks that " Wimsey may have been the sad ghost of a wartime lover (...).

The lady's death has aroused no suspicion, despite her doctor's dismay at her end coming so quickly, but Wimsey suspects that it may, after all, have been ' unnatural '.

Wimsey speculates that Will may not have wanted to live, having guessed his part in killing Deacon.

Some editions include as a foreword a letter written by Sayers " To my friend Joe Dignam, the kindliest of landlords ," from which it becomes evident that she herself was in the habit of having holidays in Galloway-a habit attributed to Wimsey in the book-and that on one of them she promised her landlord to write a detective novel set in this area, of which the book was a fulfilment.

A bon vivant who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective.

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

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.

In one of the Wimsey Papers, a series of fictionalised commentaries in the form of mock letters between members of the Wimsey family published in the Spectator, there is a reference to Harriet's difficulty in continuing to write murder mysteries at a time when European dictators were openly committing mass murders with impunity ; this seems to have reflected Sayers ' own wartime feeling.

The official investigator, Inspector Sugg, suspects Thipps and his servant ; Wimsey starts his own enquiry.

Working against time before the new trial, Wimsey first explores the possibility that Boyes took his own life.

Supposedly created as a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers ' detective Lord Peter Wimsey, Campion established his own identity, and matured and developed as the series progressed.

Even much later, however, Wimsey would have relapses — especially when his actions caused a murderer to be hanged.

His deep remorse and guilt at having caused Crutchley to be executed leave doubt as to whether he would undertake further murder investigations-and in fact Sayers wrote no further Wimsey novels after this one.

The perpetrator is finally unmasked by Wimsey as one of the college servants, revealed to be the widow of a disgraced academic at a northern university.

" Whereupon Miss Murchison, the indefatigable investigator employed by Wimsey for much of this book, comments " Or, if one wasn't accustomed to be waited on, one might use the water from the bedroom jug.

According to Sayers ' friend and biographer Barbara Reynolds, Sayers had begun work in 1936 on Thrones, Dominations, a murder mystery novel in which the Wimsey marriage was to be contrasted with those of two other couples.

In Have His Carcase she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds Wimsey to be overbearing and superficial.

The Wimsey Papers were a series of articles published by Sayers during World War II, purporting to be letters written between the various Wimseys during the war ( similar to Busman's Honeymoon, Sayers's last completed Wimsey novel, the novel's prologue consists entirely of selections from these letters ).

The fictional place Duke's Denver, the family seat of the Duke of Denver, brother of Lord Peter Wimsey in the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, is also in Norfolk, but it is supposed to be situated several miles to the east of Denver village.

She and Holmes are also implied to be friends with fellow fictional detective Peter Wimsey, who makes a cameo appearance in A Letter of Mary.

However dependent Wimsey might be on Bunter, there is never any doubt as to who is in charge, and Bunter, though firm on the points of dressing well, never oversteps the line.