Richard Hannay returns to the front lines and participates in desperate fighting following the Germans' massive, last-ditch effort to win the war. Soon after the end of the war, Hannay marries Mary Lamington, and the following year they have a son, Peter John Hannay. The boy is named after Hannay's two great friends John Scantlebury Blenkiron (an American businessman and spy who had often helped him) and Peter Pienaar ("Mr Standfast"), an old Boer scout who seems to have been a kind of father-figure to him. The family settles in Mary's old home in the Cotswolds, Fosse Manor, Oxfordshire and Hannay (now
Sir Richard Willis, 1st Baronet Fox to have been born "bereft of his wits" and died unmarried and without children at the age of 59. With his death the Baronetcy created for Sir Richard became extinct. Richard Willis appears as a character in Act II of the play Cromwell by Victor Hugo, published in Paris in 1828. In his afterword to "An Instance of the Fingerpost", Iain Pears explains that much of the book's plot was inspired by the career of Willis, and his family's later, unsuccessful attempts to clear his name. Sir Richard Willis, 1st Baronet Sir Richard Willis, 1st Baronet (sometimes spelt 'Willys')