The Wimsey Papers started flowing in, that the resiliency and true strength of Russia became apparent. Some of the letters included in "The Wimsey Papers" were used by Jill Paton Walsh as the preface for her own novel "A Presumption of Death", an authorized sequel continuing the Wimsey series where Sayers left it off. The letters provided much information which Walsh used in the book: Peter Wimsey and his servant Bunter being on a secret mission abroad, Harriet Vane taking her own children and those of her sister-in-law Mary to the country house Talboys in Hertfordshire, Peter's nephew Jerry an RAF combat pilot,
Lord Peter Wimsey Wimsey was based, at least in part, on Eric Whelpton, who was a close friend of Sayers at Oxford. Ian Carmichael, who played the part of Wimsey in the first BBC television 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. The novels are set in Britain contemporaneously with when they were written, from the early 1920s to the late 1930s. Sayers's final Wimsey story "Talboys" is set in 1942. Many episodes in the Wimsey books express a mild satire on