The Wimsey Papers—The Wartime Letters and Documents of the Wimsey Family

The Wimsey Papers are a series of articles by Dorothy L. Sayers published between November 1939 and January 1940 in The Spectator. They had the form of letters exchanged by members of the Wimsey Family and other characters familiar to readers from the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, but were in fact intended to convey Sayers' opinions and commentaries on various aspects of public life in the early months of the Second World War, such as black-out, evacuation, rationing and the need of the public to take personal responsibility rather than wait for the government to guide them. The subjects range from very practical and detailed advice on such issues as how pedestrians can avoid being hit by cars in black-out to quite Utopian and far-reaching schemes for the post-war reconstruction of Britain.