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 In "How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey," Sayers wrote: Janet Hitchman, in the preface to "Striding Folly", remarks that "Wimsey may have been the sad ghost of a wartime lover(...). Oxford, as everywhere in the country, was filled with bereaved women, but it may have been more noticeable in university towns where a whole year's intake could be wiped out in France in less than an hour." There is, however, no verifiable evidence of any such World War I lover of Sayers on whom the character of Wimsey might be based. Another theory is that