Lord Peter Wimsey years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers. Wimsey likes her, respects her, and enjoys her company—but that is not enough. In "Strong Poison", she is the first person other than Wimsey himself to realise that he has fallen in love with Harriet. In "Strong Poison" Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former lover. He falls in love with her at first sight. Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good
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