The Wimsey Papers are a series of articles by

Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...

published between November 1939 and January 1940 in ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

''. They had the form of letters exchanged by members of the Wimsey family and other characters familiar to readers of the

Lord Peter Wimsey Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh). A dilettante who solves mysteries fo ...

detective novels; but the articles were intended to convey Sayers's opinions and commentaries on various aspects of public life in the early months of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

Content

The topics covered include such matters as blackout, evacuation, rationing and the need for the public to take personal responsibility rather than wait for the government to guide them. The subjects range from very practical and detailed advice ranging from such issues as how pedestrians can avoid being hit by cars in the blackout to quite Utopian and far-reaching schemes for the post-war reconstruction of Britain. The letters also expressed Sayers's displeasure with the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain in the previous years, and her doubts about his fitness to lead Britain in war (at the time of writing, it was not yet known that Chamberlain would soon be replaced by

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

). The papers also attributed to Harriet Vane a reluctance to go on writing murder mysteries at the time when European dictators were committing mass murders openly and with impunity. This seems to have been Sayers's own feeling, as she in fact abandoned during World War II the writing of murder mysteries and never took it up again. There is a repeated unfavorable opinion of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, in the aftermath of the

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ri ...

and the Soviet attack on Finland. The opinion that there was little to choose between

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...

and

fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

, and that the two kinds of dictatorship are equally reprehensible, is given special prominence by being attributed to Lord Peter Wimsey himself. Other characters are shown as expressing the opinion that, even had Britain managed to conclude an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1939, the Soviets would have proven an unreliable ally of little military worth, given their army's weak performance in Finland. On this point Sayers' opinion, like that of most other Britons, did not change in 1941. Getting the Soviets on Britain's side was highly welcome, but the lamentable performance and mass surrenders of the Red Army seemed to bear out the negative assessment. It was only in 1942, when the Germans lost an Army at Stalingrad and American supplies started flowing in, that the resiliency and true strength of Russia became apparent. The papers do provide some significant new details about Wimsey's character, in particular the ironic epitaph he writes for himself when setting out for a dangerous mission behind enemy lines: ''Here lies an anachronism in the vague expectation of eternity''. They also show that in addition to his thorough knowledge of the classics of English literature, Wimsey is familiar – though in fundamental disagreement – with the works of

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, and well able to debate with Marxists on their home ground.

Later reuse

Some of the letters included in ''The Wimsey Papers'' were used by

Jill Paton Walsh Gillian Honorine Mary Herbert, Baroness Hemingford, (née Bliss; 29 April 1937 – 18 October 2020), known professionally as Jill Paton Walsh, was an English novelist and children's writer. She may be known best for her Booker Prize-nominated n ...

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.

Availability

Other than the selection made by Walsh and incorporated in her book, ''The Wimsey Papers'' have never been republished. In the Author's Note appended to ''A Presumption of Death'', Walsh cautioned the eager Wimsey fans that "The Wimsey Papers are not fiction, and were not intended to be read in a continuous chunk" and that "Some of them are about details of war-time history that would now require extensive footnotes in explication". Nevertheless, one such fan made the effort to retype them from archive copies of ''The Spectator'' and make them available online (see External Links). "The Wimsey Papers" are now available as a Kindle ebook from Amazon.

External links

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The Wimsey Papers, backed up at archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wimsey Papers 1939 essays 1940 essays Novels by Dorothy L. Sayers Novels set during World War II British essays Works originally published in The Spectator