Showing results by author "P.G. Wodehouse" in All Categories

Most of the big money belongs to Torquil Paterson Frisby, the dyspeptic American millionaire – but that doesn’t stop him wanting more out of it. His niece, the beautiful Ann Moon, is engaged to ‘Biscuit’, Lord Biskerton, who doesn’t have very much of the stuff and so he has to escape to Valley Fields to hide from his creditors. Meanwhile, his old schoolfriend Berry Conway, who is working for Frisby, himself falls for Ann – just as Biscuit falls for her friend Kitchie Valentine.

We find ourselves in the austerity of the 1950s, when England's aristocracy was feeling the pinch. Bertie Wooster has gone to a residential self-help school to learn how to darn his socks. Until he re-emerges, Jeeves has signed up with Bill Rowcester (pronounced Roaster), an earl who is failing to make ends meet in trade, and yearning to sell his stately home, which has charm and damp in equal measure. In his new environment Jeeves is required to exert his mammoth brain to what would be breaking point for any normal intellect.

The life of Jimmy Crocker has been little more than one drunken brawl after another. His formidable Aunt Nesta has had enough of his antics and decrees that the young Crocker must be reformed. However, Jimmy has fallen in love and decided to reform himself. Unfortunately, to win the heart of his intended, Jimmy must pretend to be someone else and take part in the kidnapping of Aunt Netsa's loathsome offspring Ogden. The reformation of oneself can be a decidedly tricky business.

While Blandings Castle sleeps in the summer sun, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth, is busily engaged in writing his Reminiscences, and they look set to be as warm as the weather, if not warmer. For Galahad has led a thoroughly misspent life, and his acquaintances can all too easily recall their past follies in his company. Reputations are at stake and even the nobility and gentry are beginning to panic.

When Bingo Little falls in love with a tea-and-bun-shop waitress at a Camberell subscription dance and Bertie falls into the mulligatawny, there's work for a wet-nurse. Who better than Jeeves? With his usual savoir-faire and panache Jeeves unties the tangles and irons out the creases in his unflappable and inimitable way. "I always say, and I always shall say," proclaims Bingo Little, "that you've only got to stand on Jeeves and fate can't touch you."

When Maud Marsh flings herself into George Bevan's cab in Piccadilly, he starts believing in damsels in distress. George traces his mysterious traveling companion to Belpher Castle, home of Lord Marshmoreton, where things become severely muddled. Maud's aunt, Lady Caroline Byng, wants Maud to marry Reggie, her stepson. Maud, meanwhile, is known to be in love with an unknown American she met in Wales. So when George turns up speaking American, a nasty case of mistaken identity breaks out.

In the Angler’s Rest, drinking hot scotch and lemon, sits one of Wodehouse’s greatest raconteurs. Mr Mulliner, his vivid imagination lubricated by Miss Postlethwaite the barmaid, has fabulous stories to tell of the extraordinary behaviour of his far-flung family... One of them concerns Wilfred, who lights on the formula for Buck-U-Uppo, a tonic given to elephants to enable them to face tigers with the necessary nonchalance. Its explosive effects on a shy young curate and then the higher clergy is gravely revealed.

No longer in master Bertie Wooster’s employ, Jeeves is engaged with a new employer, Lord "Chuffy" Chuffnell, an old friend of Bertie’s. True to form, thus follows a supreme comedy of errors which is guaranteed to raise many a chortle, as Wooster travels to one of Chuffy’s cottages in Dorset to carry on his banjolele practice in (dubious) peace.

Since retiring from business, the chief obsessions of American millionaire J. Preston Peters are his dyspepsia and his collection of Egyptian scarabs. So, when fluffy-minded peer Lord Emsworth - father of Freddie Threepwood, fiancé of Mr. Peters' daughter, Aline - absent-mindedly pockets the gem of Mr. Peters' collection, and puts it on display in the museum at Blandings Castle, Mr. Peters offers rich rewards to anyone who can get the precious scarab back for him...without causing a scandal. Two impecunious young American exiles in London rise to the challenge.

Joey Cooley is a golden-curled child film star, the idol of American motherhood. Reginald, Third Earl of Havershot, is a boxing blue on a mission to save his wayward cousin from the fleshpots of Hollywood. Both are under anaesthetic at the dentists when something strange happens - and their identities are swapped. Suddenly Joey can use his six-foot frame to get his own back on his Hollywood persecutors. But Reggie has to endure everything Joey had to put up with in the horrible life of a child star - including kidnap.

Golf, like measles, should be caught young. P. G. Wodehouse leads the listener out on to another round of golf stories that always avoid the rough.

The immaculate Psmith - newly emancipated from an unwilling participation in the fish business - donates an umbrella (not his own) to a damsel in distress; and to further press his suit, he follows her to Blandings Castle - seat of that amiable and boneheaded peer, Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth - in the guise of an absconded Canadian poet. And, for the best possible motives, Psmith is also embroiled in a plot to steal Lady Constance Keeble's fabulous diamond necklace - an endeavour which brings him into conflict with both professional rivals.

Michael Hordern stars as Jeeves, with Richard Briers as Bertie, in a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. It's the stuff of nightmares for Bertie as he is hauled back to Totleigh Towers and the whole loony crew of Madeline, Gussie, Roderick Spode, Stiffy Byng, and the dog Bartholomew.

The first volume of Wodehouse's brilliant complete and unabridged short stories. Originally a semi-novel, this version contains self-contained stories which are nonetheless linked, often by Bingo Little, an endearingly hopeless chap and a serial romancer.

Webster's Dictionary gives the meaning of the word "miasma" as "an infection floating in the air; a deadly exhalation". And in the opinion of Mr. Robert Ferguson, that description, though perhaps a little too flattering, on the whole summed up Master Roland Bean pretty satisfactorily. Until the previous day, Master Bean had served Mr. Ferguson in the capacity of office-boy. But there was that about Master Bean which made it practically impossible for anyone to employ him for long.

Sam Bagshott, son of the late Boko Bagshott, had been at Blandings Castle only a short while, but long enough to know that anyone enjoying its hospitality must get the occasional shock. Sam braced himself as the possibilities flitted through his mind. The house was on fire? Empress of Blandings had taken to the bottle again? Constable Evans had arrived with a search warrant?

A major mix-up at Blandings Castle, in which Galahad introduces yet another imposter to Lord Emsworth's residence and the Empress of Blandings gets sloshed in her sty. Formidable comic characters designed to interrupt Lord Emsworth's peace include his overbearing sister Lady Hermione Wedge who comes complete her own meddling secretary, and Dame Daphne Winkworth who has her eye on becoming the next Countess. As ever the stage is set for Gally to try and restore order to the ensuing chaos!

Meet Psmith, with a silent 'P' as in psychic. A gallant, charming individual, Psmith has a gift for getting into awful scrapes, and when he takes over a gentile journal known as Cosy Moments with the aid of Billy Windsor, its sub-editor, he turns it into a radical publication...with alarming and hilarious results.

My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is coolheaded and poised.

Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, sank back in his chair looking like the good old man in a Victorian melodrama whose mortgage the villain had just foreclosed. He felt the absence of that gentle glow which customarily accompanied the departure of one of his sisters. Lord Emsworth needed Galahad....There are tricky corners to be rounded, and assorted godsons, impostors, and pretty girls to be paired off.