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.