Editing Lord Peter Wimsey (section)

==The stories==
Dorothy Sayers wrote 11 Wimsey novels and a number of short stories featuring Wimsey and his family. Other recurring characters include Inspector Charles Parker, the family solicitor Mr Murbles, barrister Sir Impey Biggs, journalist Salcombe Hardy, and family friend and financial whiz the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, who finds himself entangled in the case in the first of the Wimsey books, ''[[Whose Body?]]'' (1923).

Sayers wrote no more Wimsey murder mysteries, and only one story involving him, after the outbreak of [[World War II]]. In ''[[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 Wimsey Papers'' included a reference to Wimsey and Bunter setting out during the war on a secret mission of espionage in Europe, and provide the ironic epitaph Wimsey writes for himself: "Here lies an anachronism in the vague expectation of eternity". 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 only occasion when Sayers returned to Wimsey was the 1942 short story "Talboys". 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. Though Sayers lived until 1957, she never again took up the Wimsey books after this final effort.

[[Jill Paton Walsh]] wrote about Wimsey's career through and beyond the Second World War. In the [[continuation novel|continuation]]s ''[[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]]. Consequently, when Wimsey's brother dies of a heart attack in 1951 during a fire in Bredon Hall, Wimsey becomes — very reluctantly — the Duke of Denver.  Their Graces are then drawn into a mystery at a [[List of fictional Oxford colleges#Other works|fictional Oxford college]].