You might think that was enough for one man, but not a bit of it. He has a perfect palate and an international reputation as a wine connoisseur; collects antique books; is musical and sensitive; a superb natural athlete with a cricketing blue; and his horsemanship is top notch.
Thank goodness he is a fictional character - otherwise we would all feel wholly inadequate.
How did Lord Peter collect this astonishing list of accomplishments? Well, it happened gradually as his creator worked her way through the books (and very good books they are, by the way - Murder Must Advertise is one of the great detective stories in the English language).
Every time some new accomplishment came up she awarded it to her hero so he ended up with a chest full of them, rather like the medals of an African dictator. It makes you think, though: what are the accomplishments which we ought to encourage in the young?
Back in Lord Peter's 1930s there was the country house list - accomplishments which might be useful if you were asked as a guest for a country house weekend, things like a reasonable competence on the piano and the ability to cast a fly across a river, to use a gun, to play a good game of tennis or croquet, to write half-decent poetry, to ride a horse, to eat asparagus without the butter dribbling down your chin. And, of course, to make endless polite conversation.
Obviously you were not expected to do all those things, just some of them - in any case, most people never got asked to country houses at all, but it was a helpful list outside education and work which would add an extra dimension to life.
Now we have moved on and a list prepared by those advising parents on the skills they should seek for their children would look rather different.
The focus has moved and that today's young man would be encouraged to learn skills that are useful about the house. Many a young bachelor cooks just as well as his female counterpart and if he also learns that if you are sewing a button on a shirt it is better to take the shirt off first he will avoid the embarrassment of finding himself sewn into his garments.
Cooking, sewing, ironing and knitting should all be on his list and those skills will be useful later in life when he helps his partner with the housework in a sensitive, non-stereotypical way.
Then there are the bachelor girls. What are they to be taught? No right-minded feminist would want to see them encouraged towards a world of housekeeping.
No, indeed - their list should include the use of power tools, motorbike maintenance, and the important skill of changing the television channel while holding a beer in one hand and a bag of chips in the other.
Social progress demands that men are taught more about the activities previously undertaken by women and that women embrace the machismo world of men. Then the sexes will both be good at the same things and all we will need to reach modern Utopia is to find a way in which women can grow beards.
It is a beautiful prospect, but what if the different roles of men and women derive from their natural inclinations and not just from the prejudices of society? Then any re-education would move people away from the way of life to which they are best suited. That may be politically desirable but it may not be good for them.
I had a friend who owned a cat. Being opposed to eating animals, he became a vegan and it was logical, of course, that he should make the cat vegan, too. It must have been the most politically correct cat in all Hampstead ... unfortunately, it did not thrive.
-John Watson is the editor of the British weekly online magazine The Shaw Sheet where he writes as Chin Chin.
