The Late Scholar The Late Scholar The Late Scholar is the fourth Lord Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane detective novel written by Jill Paton Walsh. Featuring characters created by Dorothy L. Sayers, it was written with the co-operation and approval of Sayers' estate. It was published by Hodder & Stoughton (whose "yellow jackets" are alluded to in the book) on December 5, 2013 in the UK, and on January 14, 2014 in North America. "The Late Scholar" features the former Lord Peter Wimsey—now the Duke of Denver—and his wife, the former Harriet Vane, and is set in a fictional Oxford college called St. Severin's, mostly
Lord Peter Wimsey went with King Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade and took part in the Siege of Acre. This makes the Wimseys an unusually ancient family, since "Very few English noble families go that far in the first creation; rebellions and monarchic head choppings had seen to that", as reviewer Janet Hitchman noted in the introduction to "Striding Folly". The family coat of arms is blazoned as "Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat couched as to spring, proper". The family motto, displayed under its coat of arms, is "As my Whimsy takes me." Lord Peter was the