Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries—usually murder mysteries.
Born in 1890 and aging in real-time, Wimsey is described as having at best average height with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face (reputedly his looks were patterned after academic Roy Ridley). He also possessed considerable intelligence and athletic ability, evidenced by playing cricket for Oxford University while earning a First.
In How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers wrote:
The novels are set in Britain contemporary to when they were written, from the early 1920s to the late 1930s; the story "Talboys" (and Jill Paton Walsh's recent continuations Thrones, Dominations and A Presumption of Death) continue this into the early 1940s.
