Gaudy Night ( 1935 ) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth in her popular series about aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third featuring crime writer Harriet Vane.

Harriet is forced to re-examine her relationship with Wimsey in the light of what she has discovered about herself.

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.

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, but not always, murders.

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

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

Nevertheless, he is a friend as well as a servant, and Wimsey again and again expresses amazement at Bunter's high efficiency and competence in virtually every sphere of life.

However, Wimsey is not entirely well.

It is not exactly known when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment agency for women, a means to garner information from the otherwise inaccessible world of spinsters and widows, but it is prior to Unnatural Death ( 1927 ), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient.

She has known Wimsey for years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers.

In " Strong Poison ", she is the first person other than Wimsey himself to realize that he has fallen in love with Harriet.

Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals.

" Roger " is an ancestral Wimsey name.

In the final Wimsey story, the 1942 short story " Talboys ", Peter and Harriet are enjoying rural domestic bliss with their three sons when Bredon, their first-born, is accused of the theft of prize peaches from the neighbour's tree.

Wimsey is described as having authored numerous books, among them the following fictitious works:

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.

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

Another theory is that Wimsey was based, at least in part, on Eric Whelpton, who was a close friend of Sayers at Oxford.

" 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 ".

Wimsey eventually arrives in Oxford to help her, and she gains a new perspective on him from those who know him, including his nephew, a current undergraduate at the university.

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.

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

Back in London, Wimsey goes undercover as " Death Bredon " at an advertising firm, working as a copywriter ( Murder Must Advertise ).

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.

Lord Peter Wimsey was played by Ian Carmichael in a series of independent serials that ran from 1972 to 1975 and adapted five novels ( Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors ) and by Edward Petherbridge in 1987, in which three of the four major Wimsey / Vane novels ( Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night ) were dramatised.

Edward Petherbridge also played Wimsey in the UK production of the Busman's Honeymoon play staged at the Lyric Hammersmith and on tour in 1988, with the role of Harriet being taken by his real-life spouse, Emily Richard.

* The Wimsey Papers, published between Nov. 1939 and Jan. 1940 in The Spectator Magazine — a series of mock letters by members of the Wimsey family, being in effect fictionalised commentaries on life in England at the inception of the war.

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 up with Lord Peter at a party in the novel A Letter of Mary.

* Lord Peter Wimsey portrait at Balliol, Oxford

Under the pseudonym of " Death Bredon " ( actually his middle names ), Wimsey goes to work at Pym's.

Wimsey continues his probing at Pym's, and learns that one of the senior copywriters, Tallboy, seems to have large amounts of cash.

But Wimsey, provoked by a ball which clips his elbow, shows off the form which made him a first-team star at Eton and Oxford.

* The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, a Peter Wimsey adventure

Desperate to avoid a possible murder in college, Harriet asks her old friend Wimsey to investigate.

In " Busman's Honeymoon " Wimsey facetiously refers to a gentleman's duty " to remember whom he had taken to bed " so as not to embarrass his bedmate by calling her by the wrong name.

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.

Wimsey likes her, respects her, and enjoys her company-but that isn't enough.

In effect, rather than killing off her detective, as Conan Doyle unsuccessfully tried with his, Sayers pensioned Wimsey off to a happy, satisfying old age.

Ian Carmichael, who played the part of Wimsey in the BBC Television series adaptation and studied the character and the books thoroughly, said that the character was Sayers ' conception of the ' ideal man ', based in part on her earlier romantic misfortunes.

Clouds of Witness is a 1926 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the second in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.

Wimsey travels to New York to find her, and makes a trans-Atlantic flight-at the time, a very risky adventure which makes the headlines in all British papers-to return to London before Gerald's trial in the House of Lords ends.

From her, Wimsey brings a letter that Cathcart wrote on the night of his death, after receiving her farewell letter.

Unnatural Death is a 1927 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her third featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.

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 discovers that the patient's great-niece-popular locally-had nursed her through her illness and was the intended heiress.

When Wimsey begins investigating, using the recurring character Miss Climpson as his intelligence agent, the great-niece is provoked into covering her trail.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is a 1928 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fourth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.

Strong Poison is a 1930 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.