What makes these stand out is the effortless ease with which Wodehouse plays with language and literature and allusion. Not for the plotting, which is pitch perfect. Not because of the brimming nostalgia they evoke so gloriously. Not because of the characters, although they are utterly charming. Have they stood the test of time? Yes of course they have. Mix vigorously with the local policeman, Constable Oates.Įngagements crumble over misunderstandings an incriminating notebook is misplaced a bathtub full of newts are washed away… It is all delightfully absurd and deliciously silly stuff! And this was written as Hitler was in power in Germany, less than a year before the outbreak of World War 2! Part of me wants to decry Wodehouse’s refusal to engage with the atrocities that were already occurring on the continent – more than the satire of Roderick Spode, the amateur dictator with his ridiculous moustache who lookedĪs if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last momentīut maybe this was part of the point and the charm of the novels. Bertie Wooster and his inimitable valet, Jeeves, are dispatched to the rural idyll of Totleigh-in-the-Wold on the dual orders of Aunt Dahlia who wants him to steal a coveted cow creamer, and of Gussie Fink-Nottle whose engagement to Madeline Bassett, who resides at Totleigh Towers, is in peril – the engagement that Bertie had orchestrated in the preceding What Ho, Jeeves! Throw into the mix Madeline Bassett’s cantankerous father Sir Watkyn Bassett – who had fined Bertie £5 for stealing a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race Night and his friend the fascist Roderick Spode sprinkle over liberal helpings of Sir Watkyn Bassett’s niece, Stephanie (Stiffy) Byng and her fiance and old school friend of Bertie’s, Harold Pinker, the local curate. In this third full length novel, Wodehouse returns to warmly familiar characters and I do love the way the novels and stories feature recurring characters and call backs to other events.

You can tell the difference easily: the characters in Wodehouse, whilst entitled, privileges and self-obsessed, possess a charm and wit that Members of Her Majesty’s Parliament often fail to exhibit. Nope, definitely reviewing The Code of the Woosters. Hang on, am I reviewing a Wodehouse, or describing our current clutch of MPs? Entitled toffs with silly names basking in their own privilege whilst holed up in stately architecture.

Wodehouse code of the woosters