P.G. Wodehouse

By Ed Cumming

Of all the great novelists, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975) has the least interest in the real world. Unencumbered by gravitas, he describes a Britain that never existed, where there is no sex or death, except in passing, and the tumultuous history of the early 20th century barely gets a look-in. The gravest threat is being forced to marry someone you don’t like.

His style walks a tightrope between pastiche and perfection. If you stop to think about it, you may wonder why you’ve taken time to follow the fortunes of an aristocratic pig or antique cow creamer. Wodehouse’s trick is to make every character bend to his comic will. Bertie Wooster may be an idiot, but he still speaks in crisp sentences peppered with literary references. Yet this is a style that never indulges itself. Passages that seem incidental, such as Jeeves mentioning a round-the-world-cruise, are there to drive the plot.