Lord Peter Wimsey Lord Peter Wimsey Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh). A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. Lord Peter is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and in a few books by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife. Born in 1890 and ageing in real time, Wimsey is described as being of average
Lord Peter Wimsey short of the boss's open office door ("Murder Must Advertise"). Among Lord Peter's hobbies, in addition to criminology, is collecting incunabula, books from the earliest days of printing. He is an expert on matters of food (especially wine), male fashion, and classical music. He excels at the piano, including Bach's works for keyboard instruments. One of Lord Peter's cars is a 12-cylinder ("double-six") 1927 Daimler four-seater, which (like all his cars) he calls "Mrs Merdle" after a character in Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit" who "hated fuss". Lord Peter Wimsey's (fictional) ancestry begins with the 12th-century knight Gerald de Wimsey, who