The Wimsey Papers

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, and the unsympathetic Duchess Helen working at the Ministry of Instruction and Morale (about whose work Sayers was rather disparaging). The village dance and air raid practice, which are the starting point for the plot of A Presumption of Death, are also derived from one of Sayers' fictional letters, though the idea of making this the scene of a murder to be investigated was Walsh's.