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

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.

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 behavior 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 are gravely revealed.

The description of his ancestral seat as an earthly Paradise would, at present, have struck its proprietor as ironical, full as it was with unwanted and troublesome inhabitants. What Lord Elmsworth needed above all was a rugged ally at his side to remove from Blandings its superfluous guests, leaving him in peace to tend to his beloved pig, Empress of Blandings. However, when Lord Ickenham is on a sweetness-and-light-spreading expedition, there's always apt to be trouble.

The complete career of the immaculate Psmith! First, as a fellow lost lamb with cricket prodigy Mike Jackson at Sedleigh school; then shaking up the world of commerce in his genial efforts to reform boorish bank manager Mr. Bickersdyke; and later converting twee family periodical "Cosy Moments" into a crusading yellow journal, in pursuit of the bashful owner of New York's notorious Pleasant Street tenements. And finally following distressed damsel Eve to Blandings Castle—the seat of fluffy-minded peer Lord Emsworth—in the guise of an absconded Canadian poet.

For Edmund Biffen Christopher, life is about to be very good - assuming he can stay out of trouble. If he can avoid being arrested until his 30th birthday, he will inherit his godfather's millions. The trouble is Biff has a certain proclivity for getting into fisticuffs...particularly with policemen. And he's already nearing 30.

Pretty, impecunious Sally Nicholas never dreamed a fortune could prove a disadvantage, until she became an heiress and watched in bewilderment as her orderly existence went haywire. Coping first with her brother's wild theatrical ambitions, then with the defection of her fiancé and his immediate replacement by a much more appropriate but strangely unattractive suitor, Sally finds that life in New York is becoming altogether too complicated, and a trip to England only makes the whole situation worse.

Galahad Threepwood is causing scandal again...this time by deciding to NOT publish his potentially humiliating high-society memoirs. His decision causes rifts in the ranks at castle Blandings and all involved split into three camps: those who want the book suppressed, those who want it published, and those, who for some reason or another, that have been sent to steal it.

When the news breaks that Madeline Bassett is engaged to Gussie Fink-Nottle, Bertie's relief is intense. But when Madeline attempts to turn Gussie vegetarian, Bertie's instinct for self-preservation sends him with the steadfast Jeeves on another uproariously funny mission to Sir Watkyn Bassett's residence, Totleigh Towers.

George Uffenham, the eccentric sixth viscount of Uffenham, has just converted the family fortune into diamonds - and stashed them away in a secret hiding place. But as luck would have it, an unfortunate car accident soon thereafter causes him to forget the jewels' location. In order to recover the gems, he must let out his estate, Shipley Hall, to big-game hunter Clarissa Cork and return posing as the butler, Cakebread.

The Times has announced, much to Bertie's astonishment, the news of his engagement to the beautiful Bobbie Wickham. But worse is to come....Uncle Tom's antique silver cow-creamer has gone missing; Kipper Herring has libelled his and Bertie's former headmaster; leading British psychiatrist Sir Roderick Glossop is posing as a butler; and Aunt Dahlia's masterly French chef, Anatole, is once again becoming a pawn in a terrible power struggle.

In this Fireside Reading Gildart Jackson brings to life the wildly funny comedy classic The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. Originally penned as a series of short stories, The Inimitable Jeeves follows Bertie Wooster, a decent lad from the 1920s, who has a knack for falling into comedic mishaps at the behest of his friend, Bingo Little. Bingo’s incessant search for love frequently gets Bertie into the most dreadful scrapes, forcing him to seek the guidance of his infallible Butler, Jeeves.

If Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge had a fiver for every dodgy scheme he had ever floated, he would be a very rich man indeed. In these ten stories he tries every way of making money, from writing political slogans to opening a college for dogs. In his own eyes, Ukridge is a Great Man and a visionary. In ours, he is English literature's most delightful chancer and one of Wodehouse's greatest comic creations: charming, ambitious, persuasive, optimistic and almost always disastrous.

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 anesthetic 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 kidnapping.

Trapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably have given way at the knees. For among those present were Florence Craye, to who Bertie had once been engaged...and her new fiance 'Stilton' Cheesewright, who regarded Bertie as a snake in the grass...also Zenobia Hopwood and her guardian Lord Worplesdon, whose violent antipathy to 'Boko' Fittleworth amounted to obsession...and that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout.

Kirk, an impecunious artist of perfect physique, and Ruth, a spoilt heiress, were blissfully happy through their early days of marriage and the birth of their first son. But when Kirk returns from a trip to Columbia to find Ruth under the thumb of her Aunt Laura, an advocate of eugenics, parenting philosophies divide them. It takes a series of comic mishaps, featuring a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters, to retrieve the family’s happiness from the overbearing aunt.

Bertie Wooster's friend Gussie Fink-Nottle is sentenced to 14 days for wading in the fountain at Trafalgar Square. Bertie is worried that Gussie's fiancé Madeline will be angry because she has a distressing habit of turning her attentions to Bertie when her fiancé upsets her. Bertie has the bright idea of impersonating Gussie, and showing up at Deverill Hall. The situation is wonderfully comical when Gussie shows up, posing as Bertie. Only Jeeves, arriving in his own disguise, can sort out this mess.

The house party at Chateau Blissac, Brittany, features a rather odd array of guests this year. Mr. J. Wellington Gedge is hoping for some peace and quiet while his wife takes herself off for a while. She, however, has invited numerous visitors to the chateau, to whom he will have to play reluctant host. Senator Opal and his daughter are expected, and so is the chateau's handsome owner, Vicomte de Blissac.

Bertie’s friends are stepping it up. In order to de-sticky their wickets, they are asking him to impersonate themselves to country relatives, adopt a wayward infant, and even steal a marginally libelous manuscript. And to top it all off, Jeeves himself details his surreptitious plans for the young master to make an impromptu speech at a girl’s school. What’s a spirited cove to do?

Can the Empress of Blandings win the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Show for the third year running? Galahad Threepwood, Beach the butler, and others have put their shirt on this, and for Lord Emsworth it will be paradise on earth. But a substantial obstacle lurks in the way: Queen of Matchingham, the new sow of Sir Gregory Parsloe. Galahad knows this pretender to the crown must be pignapped. But can the Empress in turn avoid a similar fate? Pigs rise above their bulk to vanish and reappear in the most unlikely places....

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."