Search results for ""author p.g. wodehouse""

In nine of Wodehouse's ripest stories from the 1920s, the characters are united by their worship of golf. From Rodney Spelvin, the sickeningly good-looking romantic poet who comes to his senses when he discovers the game, to Rollo Podmarsh, who finishes his round even when he thinks himself fatally poisoned, and Chester Meredith who discovers eloquence on the eighteenth green, we meet the full range of humanity in fair weather and foul. P.G. Wodehouse is recognised as the greatest English comic writer of the twentieth century. His characters and settings have entered our language and our mythology. Launched on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, the Everyman Wodehouse will eventually contain all the novels and stories, edited and reset. Each Everyman volume will be the finest edition of the master ever published.

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Containing drafts of stories later rewritten for other collections (including Carry On, Jeeves), My Man Jeeves offers a fascinating insight into the genesis of comic literature's most celebrated double-act. All the stories are set in New York, four of them featuring Jeeves and Wooster themselves; the rest concerning Reggie Pepper, an earlier version of Bertie. Plots involve the usual cast of amiable young clots, choleric millionaires, chorus-girls and vulpine aunts, but towering over them all is the inscrutable figure of Jeeves, manipulating the action from behind the scenes.Early or not, these stories are masterly examples of Wodehouse's art,turning the most ordinary incidents into golden farce.

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When Sam Marlowe falls in love with his cousin's sparky ex-fiancée he finds himself up against stiff opposition from her millionaire father, her father's best friend and the best friend's son for whom she is destined, all of them travelling together aboard the RMS Atlantic. Nothing daunted, Sam perseveres in his suit: though he fails at sea he eventually triumphs on land. This Anglo-American musical comedy in prose begins in New York, crosses the Atlantic in leisurely fashion and ends in an English country house where all manner of things go bump in the night.

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The only Jeeves story in which Bertie Wooster makes no appearance, involves Jeeves on secondment as butler and general factotum to William Belfry, ninth Earl of Rowcester (pronounced Roaster). Despite his impressive title, Bill Belfry is broke, which may explain why he and Jeeves have been working as Silver Ring bookies, disguised in false moustaches and loud check suits. All goes well until the terrifying Captain Brabazon-Biggar, big-game hunter, two-fisted he-man and saloon-bar bore, lays successful bets on two outsiders, leaving the would-be bookies three thousand pounds down and on the run from their creditor. Ring For Jeeves is the story of their misadventures as they attempt to evade the incandescent Captain, combined with Bill's attempt to sell his crumbling mansion to rich American widow, Rosalinda Spottsworth - who just happens to be Brabazon-Biggar's former flame...

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Always to be found in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest where he is a favourite with the accomplished barmaid, Miss Postlethwaite, Mr Mulliner, the narrator of Meet Mr Mulliner, returns for another series of stories about his extraordinary relations, including Lancelot, Adrian, Cyril, Sacheverell, Eustace, Egbert and Augustine Mulliner. In a text teeming with tipsy bishops, angry baronets, lady novelists and haughty dowagers, the Mulliner boys always manage to come out on top.

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In this comic novel - dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in the stage version - Jimmy Pitt, man-about-town and former newspaper hound, takes a bet that he cannot commit burglary. He finds breaking and entering easy enough, but then discovers that he has forced his way into the home of a tough New York policeman. Naturally, Captain McEachern has a beautiful daughter and problems of his own. The complications which ensue from their meeting, involving a rich cast of Wodehousean characters from both sides of the Atlantic, create one of his most amusing and light-hearted early novels.

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J. Wellington Gedge seems to have everything a man could desire: a rich wife, a chateau, a life of ease in the south of France. But all he really wants is to return to California, not least because Mrs Gedge, who holds the purse-strings, is scheming to have him appointed as American ambassador in Paris, which means he will have to wear a sissy uniform. Fortunately, her plans are thwarted by a complicated series of events which involves French aristocrats, American crooks, an English novelist and the appalling Senator Opal, whose daughter, Jane, has a mind of her own.

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Take a pig, a fat-headed earl, a country house, several pairs of frustrated lovers, some scheming outsiders, and all sorts of people who aren’t who they say they are. Mix thoroughly and apply the Wodehouse magic. The result is the lightest of literary soufflées, another instalment in the long-running saga of the Threepwood family, including the head of the clan, Lord Emsworth, his virago sister, Lady Constance, and his debonair brother, the Honourable Galahad Threepwood, ex-boulevardier and solver of romantic problems.

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Anyone who involves himself with Roberta Wickham is asking for trouble, so naturally Bertie Wooster finds himself in just that situation when he goes to stay with his Aunt Dahlia at Brinkley Court. So much is obvious. Why celebrated loony-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop should be there too, masquerading as a butler, is less clear. As for Bertie’s former headmaster, the ghastly Aubrey Upjohn, the dreadful novelist, Mrs Homer Cream and her eccentric son Wilbert, their presence is entirely perplexing. Without Jeeves to help him solve these mysteries, Bertie nearly comes unstuck. It is only when that peerless manservant returns from his holiday that the resulting tangle of problems is sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction – except Bertie’s.

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Newly married to novelist Rosie M. Banks, Bingo bucks the current trend by being extremely happy, although he does tend to lose his shirt on various horses. This collection of wonderfully funny stories features a cast of outrageous characters.

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It is pig stealing time in Shropshire. After winning the Fat Pig competition for two years in a row with Empress of Blandings, Lord Emsworth's ascendancy at the Agricultural Show is threathened by Sir Gregory Parsloe's new sow, Queen of Matchingham. Always keen to help, Lord Emsworth's brother Galahad plots the theft of the Parsloe pig. In retaliation, Sir Gregory's pigman, George Cyril Wellbeloved, snaffles the Empress. While these momentous events are under way, a romantic comedy unfolds at Blandings Castle whither Jerry Vail her pursued Penny Donaldson. But Penny is engaged to Orlo Vosper who pines for Gloria Salt who is engaged to Sir Gregory who rediscovers Maudje Stubbs who has charmed Lord Emsworth, who is Jerry's employer.

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'A splendid anthology' The TimesNo writer knew better than PG Wodehouse how a drink can lift the spirits – and he was a master at the high comic effects of having a few too many. Highballs for Breakfast is a handpicked selection of wit, wisdom and comic moments from Wodehouse’s work that involve getting pickled or plastered, or lathered or sozzled, and getting in and out of all manner of scrapes.If some great writers dwelled on the darker side of drinking, Wodehouse was concerned with the pure pleasure to be had from ‘the magic bottle’ and getting outside of the contents of a tall glass. His imperishable writing displays a well-turned appreciation for all kinds of booze – cocktails, champagne, port, whiskey and brandy (with soda, of course); but also the humble pint, and even the infamous poteen.This sparkling collection captures Wodehouse at his best on being terribly thirsty, or drowning one’s sorrows, or knocking one back for Dutch courage. It finds him celebrating the special atmospheres of the English country pub and the Manhattan barroom. And it shows him to be exceptionally good on hangovers, but equally so on hangover cures, such as the legendary pick-me-ups prepared for Bertie Wooster by the dependable Jeeves.For all lovers of a laugh and a drink, Highballs for Breakfast is a tonic, a bracer, and a tissue-restorer.

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'Wodehouse would have made an excellent sports writer' Sunday TimesAs Wodehouse’s biographer Frances Donaldson observed, it was vitally important to the boy Plum that he was ‘above average at games’. Luckily, he was known at school as ‘a noted athlete, a fine footballer and cricketer [and] a boxer’, and sport inspired much of his earliest writings, as well as some of his very finest and laugh-out-loud funniest. Wodehouse wrote with trademark wit on a rich range of games – and on cricket and golf, in particular – as well as anyone ever has, bringing a knowledge and a passion born of practice. English cricket inspired in Wodehouse what he himself long considered to be his favourite work; and yet America (which he first visited keenly and then came to call home) led him to the love of baseball, and golf – enthusiasms that drew him to new tales for new audiences, including the celebrated golf stories which John Updike described as ‘the best fiction ever done about the sport.’This rollicking anthology, selected, edited and introduced by the novelist Richard T. Kelly, offers a vivid picture of Wodehouse at play – in the ring, at the crease, on the tee – which is guaranteed to please any sporting crowd. Beginning with early journalism, taking in extracts from novels and short stories in their entirety, it all adds up to a medal-winning collection.

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‘Does one desire the Yule-tide spirit, sir?’‘Certainly one does. I am all for it.’Aunts, engagements, misunderstandings and hangover cures; this delightful collection from ‘the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness’ (Julian Fellowes) brings together a baker’s dozen of P. G. Wodehouse’s finest short stories.‘A comic master’ David Walliams‘A cavalcade of perfect joy’ Caitlin Moran

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A Mulliner collectionA private detective who can make the guilty confess simply by smiling at them. An artist so intimidated by his morally impeccable cat that he feels compelled to wear formal attire at dinner. A devotee of Proust whose life is turned upside down when he inadvertently subscribes to a correspondence course on How to Acquire Complete Self-Confidence and an Iron Will. These are just a few of the many members of the eccentric Mulliner clan whose lives and exploits are laid before the regulars of the Angler's Rest by that doyen of raconteurs, Mr Mulliner, in a series of hilarious and beautifully turned short stories where lunacy and comic exuberance reign supreme.

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A Golf collectionFrom his favourite chair on the terrace above the ninth hole, The Oldest Member tells a series of hilarious golfing stories. From Evangeline, Bradbury Fisher's fifth wife and a notorious 'golfing giggler', to poor Rollo Podmarsh whose game was so unquestionably inept that 'he began to lose his appetite and would moan feebly at the sight of a poached egg', the game of golf, its players and their friends and enemies are here shown in all their comic glory. One of Wodehouse's funniest books, The Heart of Goof is a collection of peerlessly comic short stories.

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‘I love his writing, it’s so clever and funny, so deft.' Alan Titchmarsh’s 6 Best Books choice (Daily Express)A Blandings collectionThe ivied walls of Blandings Castle have seldom glowed as sunnily as in these wonderful stories - but there are snakes in the rolling parkland ready to nip Clarence, the absent-minded Ninth Earl of Emsworth, when he least expects it.For a start the Empress of Blandings, in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, is off her food ­- and can only be coaxed back to the trough by a call in her own language. Then there is the feud with Head Gardener McAllister, aided by Clarence's sister, the terrifying Lady Constance, and the horrible prospect of the summer fête - twin problems solved by the arrival of a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. But first of all there is the vexed matter of the custody of the pumpkin.Skipping an ocean and a continent, Wodehouse also treats us to some unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood.

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__________________________________A Jeeves and Wooster novel'It's hard to single out one book as the entire Jeeves and Wooster collection is Bach Rescue Remedy in literary form, but this tale of romantic imbroglio is a priceless hoot... Every sentence is a perfectly wrought delight.' IndependentAt Deverill Hall, an idyllic Tudor manor in the picture-perfect village of King's Deverill, impostors are in the air. The prime example is man-about-town Bertie Wooster, doing a good turn to Gussie Fink-Nottle by impersonating him while he enjoys fourteen days away from society after being caught taking an unscheduled dip in the fountains of Trafalgar Square. Bertie is of course one of nature's gentlemen, but the stakes are high: if all is revealed, there's a danger that Gussie's simpering fiancée Madeline may turn her wide eyes on Bertie instead. It's a brilliant plan - until Gussie himself turns up, imitating Bertram Wooster. After that, only the massive brain of Jeeves (himself in disguise) can set things right.

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A renowned feel-good classic of comic writing from "arguably the greatest writer of comic prose ever," gorgeous hardcover gift edition (The New York Times)“Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in” – Evelyn WaughIntroducing two of the greatest characters created by the undisputed master of English comic prose, this is quite simply one of the funniest books ever written.Whether attempting to stay on the right side of his ghastly Aunt Agatha, evade the clutches of the forbidding Honoria Glossop, or simply having a punt on the length of local curates’ sermons, Bertie Wooster can always rely on his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves, for sound advice and an ingenious wheeze to get him out of a tight spot.“You don’t analyze such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendor.” – Stephen Fry“Wodehouse is the funniest writer—that is, the most resourceful and unflagging deliverer of fun—that the human race, a glum crowd, has yet produced.” – The New Yorker

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A Blandings novelUnwelcome guests are descending on Blandings Castle - particularly the overbearing Duke of Dunstable, who settles in the Garden Suite with no intention of leaving, and Lady Constance, Lord Emsworth's sister and a lady of firm disposition, who arrives unexpectedly from New York. Skulduggery is also afoot involving the sale of a modern nude painting (mistaken by Lord Emsworth for a pig). It's enough to take the noble earl on the short journey to the end of his wits.Luckily Clarence's brother Galahad Threepwood, cheery survivor of the raffish Pelican Club, is on hand to set things right, restore sundered lovers and even solve all the mysteries.

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A P.G. Wodehouse novelThe peaceful slumber of the Worcester village of Rudge-in-the-Vale is about to be rudely disrupted. First there's a bitter feud between peppery Colonel Wyvern and the Squire of Rudge Hall, rich but miserly Lester Carmody. Second, that arch-villain Chimp Twist has opened a health farm - and he and Soapy and Dolly Molloy are planning a fake burglary so Lester can diddle his insurance company. After the knockout drops are served, things get a little complicated. But will Lester's nephew John win over his true love, Colonel Wyvern's daughter Pat, and restore tranquillity to the idyll? It's a close-run thing...

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A P.G. Wodehouse novelIt's America during Prohibition and shy young George Finch is setting out as an artist - without the encumbrance of a shred of talent. George falls in love with Molly, whose imperious stepmother Mrs Waddington insists he's not the man to marry the stepdaughter of one of New York's most fashionable hostesses. Poor George - he doesn't seem to stand a chance.How George eventually triumphs over the bossy Mrs Waddington makes for a dizzying plot featuring some of Wodehouse's most appealing minor characters - Mullett the butler and his light-fingered girlfriend Fanny, J. Hamilton Beamish, author of the dynamic Beamish Booklets, Officer Garroway the poetic policeman, and Sigsbee H. Waddington, the hen-pecked husband who longs for the wide open spaces of the West.Oh, and does Prohibition mean there's no booze? In a Wodehouse novel? You'll have to wait and see...

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The Honourable Galahad Threepwood has decided to write his memoirs and England's aristocrats are all diving for cover, not least Galahad's formidable sister Lady Constance Keeble who fears that her brother will ruin the family reputation with saucy stories of the 1890s. But Galahad's memoirs are not the only cause for concern. Yet again Lord Emsworth's prize pig has been stolen and, as usual, the castle seems to be buzzing with imposters all pretending to be one another. Love and natural justice triumph in the end, but not before Wodehouse has tangled and unangled a plot of Shakespearean complexity in a novel which might as well be subtitled 'The Price of the Papers'.

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As always, Bertie is about to find himself in the soup (or 'up to the knees in bisque') and Jeeves is poised to pull him out - quite possibly after pushing him in in the first place. In this omnibus of characteristically hilarious short stories and novels, Jeeves is for the first time shockingly employed to resolve the woes of someone other than Bertie Wooster. Contains The Mating Season, Ring for Jeeves and Very Good, Jeeves...

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Anthony, fifth Earl of Droitwich, is engaged to Violet, a millionaires daughter which was a result of their families planning rather than natures course. Their plan to maintain the family coffers is undermined by the arrival of his Nanny whom under the influence of too much medicinal Brandy allows certain skeletons out of the family tomb. On top of this Anthony has fallen for manicurist Polly Brown whom the family don't consider to be countess material. Tony departs for London with the resourceful Polly Brown, leaving the ancestral home in the hands of the Socialist barber Syd Price...

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First published in 1956, this collection of articles covers Wodehouse's feelings on United States, his adopted homeland all collected into one edition. Features a collection of articles originally from Punch magazine as well as America, I Like You, all with Wodehouse's usual wit and personality.

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An early Wodehouse novel, this is both a sporting story and a tale of friendship between two boys at boarding school. Mike (introduced in the novel Mike at Wrykyn) is a seriously good cricketer who forms an unlikely alliance with old Etonian Psmith (‘the P is silent’) after they both find themselves fish out of water at a new school, Sedleigh, where they eventually overcome the hostility of others and their own prejudices to become starsEven readers uninterested in cricket are likely to be gripped by descriptions of matches, and the plot, though slight, reaches a satisfying conclusion. But the real meat of the book is to be found in the characters, especially the elegant Psmith, one of Wodehouse’s immortal creations, who features in three of his later novels (Psmith in the City, Psmith Journalist, Leave it to Psmith).

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St Austin's school (as featured in The Pothunters) is the setting for twelve delightful early Wodehouse stories. The familiar ingredients - and some of the same characters - are present: cricket and rugby loom large, school colours are gained, tricks are played, exams avoided, revenge wreaked upon enemies, and the honour of School and House upheld. A nostalgic look at English public-school life at the turn of the twentieth century, made enjoyable today by the young Wodehouse's gentle humour and witty turn of phrase.

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It is the general view at Eckleton school that there never was such a house of slackers as Kay's. Fenn, head of house and county cricketer, does his best to impose some discipline but is continually undermined by his house-master, the meddlesome and ineffectual Mr Kay. After the Summer Concert fiasco, Mr Kay resolves to remove Fenn from office and puts his house into special measures, co-opting Kennedy, second prefect of Blackburn's, as reluctant troubleshooter with a brief to turn the place around. But without the backing of Fenn, and the whole house hostile towards him, how can he achieve the impossible ...?

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Much married American movie mogul Ivor Llewellyn depends on his friends at Bachelors Anonymous to keep him out of romantic entanglements on his trip to London. First, they arrange for Joe Pickering to be his bodyguard. Then his lawyer, Ephraim Trout, is sent to England to help fend off the actress Vera Dalrymple who is determined to ensnare Llewellyn. All seems to be going well. But when devoted bachelor Trout takes it upon himself to thwart a romance between Pickering and a beautiful journalist, he sets in train a series of events which end in more than one marriage including his own

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Three American sisters leave their chicken farm on Long Island for a holiday in Europe. In France they encounter the charming but penniless Marquis de Maufringneuse, his writer son Jeff, and the marquis’s tough American ex-wife. When they all find themselves together at the exclusive resort of St. Rocque - one of the sisters in search of a husband, the marquis in search of a fortune, the writer in search of love - Wodehousian complications ensue.

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The thought of being cooped up in Blandings Castle with Clarence, the Earl of Emsworth, the perennially youthful Galahad and with the Earl's younger son, Freddie Threepwood, openly appalled Colonel Wedge. It was, he grimly asserted, like being wrecked on a desert island with the Marx Brothers. But the arrival of Tipton Plimsoll at Blandings Castle considerably brightened the Colonel's horizon. For Tip-ton was a rich young American and rich young Americans were, in the Colonel's opinion, quite the most desirable companions for his daughter, Veronica, the dumbest beauty listed in the pages of Debrett. The stage was set for a great romance, or so the Colonel thought, and so it might have been had the knowledge of Freddie's erstwhile engagement to Veronica been withheld from the jealous Tipton, or if Prudence, the Earl's niece, had not been forcibly parted from her unsuitable lover, Bill Lister. On such incidents do great issues depend. However, Uncle Gaily, who combined the ready resource of a confidence trickster with the zeal of a cheerful crusader, intervened with an ingenious scheme to reunite the young lovers. It was a master-plan. How the plot miscarried at the crucial stage and in doing so caused a social and domestic revolution unparalleled in the history of Blandings Castle, is revealed in this most hilarious of chronicles.

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When George, Viscount Uffenham turns the entire family fortune into diamonds and squirrels them away, naturally he forgets where he has hidden the loot and finds himself compelled to let the family seat to stay afloat. So it is that Mrs Cork's health colony comes into being, providing the perfect setting for crime and young love to flower.

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While pursuing the love of his life, American heiress Pauline Stoker, Lord 'Chuffy' Chuffnell borrows the services of Jeeves, the perfect gentleman's gentleman. But when Chuffy finds out that Jeeves's employer, Bertie Wooster, was once engaged to Pauline himself – until the engagement was broken by her tough-egg father, abetted by loony-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop – such fearsome complications ensue that even Jeeves has difficulty securing a happy ending.

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Wodehouse is at his most sparkling in this collection of stories concering members of the Drones Club. Pongo Twistleton and Freddie Widgeon may be small of brain and short of cash but they are always good for ingenious adventures, especially when it comes to falling in love with the wrong girl or cooking up hopeless schemes to make money. They and their contemporaries populate a series of vignettes in which the plot-twists keep you on your toes while the jokes keep on coming.

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At Deverill Hall, an idyllic Tudor manor in the picture-perfect village of King's Deverill, impostors are in the air. The prime example is man-about-town Bertie Wooster, doing a good turn to Gussie Fink-Nottle by impersonating him while he enjoys fourteen days away from society after being caught taking an unscheduled dip in the fountains of Trafalgar Square. Bertie is of course one of nature's gentlemen, but the stakes are high: if all is revealed, there's a danger that Gussie's simpering fiancée Madeline may turn her wide eyes on Bertie instead. It's a brilliant plan - until Gussie himself turns up, imitating Bertram Wooster. After that, only the massive brain of Jeeves (himself in disguise) can set things right.

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Who but P.G. Wodehouse could have extraced high comedy from the most noble and ancient game of golf? And who else could have combined this comedy with a real appreciation of the game, drawn from personal experience? Wodehouse's brilliant but humane brand of humour is perfectly suited to these stories of love, rivalry, revenge and fulfilment on the links. While the oldest member sits inside the clubhouse quoting Marcus Aurelius on patience and wisdom, outside on the green the strongest human passions burn. All human life is here, from Sandy McHoots, the cocky professional, to shy Ramsden Waters, whose only consolation in life is golf. Even golf-haters will not be able to resist stories which perfectly combine physical farce and verbal wit with a gallery of unforgettable characters.

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'P. G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century' Sebastian Faulks'Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny' Arabella WeirWelcome to Blandings Castle - where there's always something going on and a rollicking good time to be had. In this collection of assorted stories, dive into the wonderful world of Wodehouse where a comedy of errors awaits at every turn. Meet the regulars at Blandings: the engagingly dotty Lord Emsworth, his terrifying sister Lady Constance and his secretary the Efficient Baxter, whose attempts to bring order to the castle always end in disarray. And revel in the hijinks galore that come with the addition of lovestruck young men, headstrong young women, iron-willed aunts and imposters roaming the grounds - not to mention the Empress of Blandings, Lord Emsworth's prized pig.

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Poor Sir Buckstone Abbott, Bart! Not only does he own in Walsingford Hall, one of the least attractive stately homes in the country, but he has to take in paying guests to keep it upright. So when it seems a rich (if not very nice) continental princess might buy it, he's overjoyed - particularly as he's being rooked by the publisher of his sporting memoirs. His daughter Jane comes up trumps in the company of the playwright Joe - but not before engagements are broken and fortunes lost and made. Another delightful novel form the master of the Engllish comedy, Wodehoues deftly unties all the knots he had so cleverly tied around his characters in the first place.

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A Mulliner collectionIn 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: in particular there's Wilfred, inventor of Raven Gypsy face-cream and Snow of the Mountain Lotion, 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. Then there's his cousin James, the detective-story writer, who has inherited a cottage more haunted than anything in his own imagination. And Isadore Zinzinheimer, head of the Bigger, Better & Brighter Motion Picture Company. Tall tales all - but among Wodehouse's best.

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A Jeeves and Wooster novelBertie Wooster has been overdoing metropolitan life a bit, and the doctor orders fresh air in the depths of the country. But after moving with Jeeves to his cottage at Maiden Eggesford, Bertie soon finds himself surrounded by aunts - not only his redoubtable Aunt Dahlia but an aunt of Jeeves's too. Add a hyper-sensitive racehorse, a very important cat and a decidedly bossy fiancée - and all the ingredients are present for a plot in which aunts can exert their terrible authority. But Jeeves, of course, can cope with everything - even aunts, and even the country. The final Jeeves and Wooster novel shows P.G. Wodehouse still able to delight, well into his nineties.

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A Blandings novelAs a peer of the realm, Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has an occasional duty to leave the Empress of Blandings, surely the most considerable pig in the whole world, and travel to London for the opening of parliament. It comes hard to him, for he has a proper sense of the priorities in life, which rate pigs and flowerbeds higher than politicians.But no sooner has he returned to Blandings than his real problems begin: the dastardly Duke of Dunstable is out to steal the Empress. His sister Lady Constance has inflicted on him a particularly nasty new secretary. And the Church Lads' Brigade are camped all over his lawns.Thank God for the Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred, whose own particularly devious brand of sweetness and light aims to banish blackmailers and pig-stealers and restore true love all over the castle grounds.

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Meet the Young Men in Spats - all members of the Drones Club, all crossed in love and all busy betting their sometimes nonexistent fortunes on unlikely outcomes - that's when they're not recovering from driving their sports cars through rather than round Marble Arch.These wonderful comic short stories are the essence of innocent fun. In them you'll encounter some of Wodehouse's favourite characters - including, for the first time, his future hero Uncle Fred. The collection is widely regarded as one of Wodehouse's best and includes one of his own favourites, 'The Amazing Hat Mystery'.

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A Jeeves and Wooster novelJust as Bertie Wooster is a member of the Drones Club, Jeeves has a club of his own, the Junior Ganymede, exclusively for butlers and gentlemen's gentlemen. In its inner sanctum is kept the Book of Revelations, where the less than perfect habits of their employers are lovingly recorded. The book is, of course, pure dynamite. So what happens when it disappears into potentially hostile hands?Tossed about in the resulting whirlwind you'll find lots of Wodehouse's favourite characters - and a welcome return to Market Snodsbury, in the middle of one of the most chaotic elections of modern times.

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It takes a lot of effort for Jimmy Crocker to become Piccadilly Jim - nights on the town roistering, headlines in the gossip columns, a string of broken hearts and breaches of promise. Eventually he bacomes rather good at it and manages to go to pieces with his eyes open. But no sooner has Jimmy cut wild swathe through fashionable London than his terrifying Aunt Nesta decides he must mend his ways. He then falls in love with the girl he has hurt most of all, and after that things get complicated.In a dizzying plot, impersonations pile on impersonations so that (for reasons that will become clear, we promise) Jimmy ends up having to pretend he's himself. Piccadilly Jim is one of P.G. Wodehouse's most renowned early comic novels, and has been filmed three times.

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A Golf collectionThe Oldest Member knows everything that has ever happened on the golf course - and a great deal more besides.Take the story of Cuthbert, for instance. He's helplessly in love with Adeline, but what use are his holes in one when she's in thrall to Culture and prefers rising young writers to winners of the French Open? But enter a Great Russian Novelist with a strange passion, and Cuthbert's prospects are transformed. Then look at what happens to young Mitchell Holmes, who misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. His career seems on the skids - but can golf redeem it?In this collection, the kindly but shrewd gaze of the Oldest Member picks out some of the funniest stories Wodehouse ever wrote.

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A Blandings novelWhen the moon is full at Blandings, strange things happen: among them the commissioning of a portrait of The Empress, twice in succession winner in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. What better choice of artist, in Lord Emsworth's opinion, than Landseer. The renowned painter of The Stag at Bay may have been dead for decades, but that doesn't prevent Galahad Threepwood from introducing him to the castle - or rather introducing Bill Lister, Gally's godson, so desperately in love with Prudence that he's determined to enter Blandings in yet another imposture. Add a gaggle of fearsome aunts, uncles and millionaires, mix in Freddie Threepwood, Beach the Butler and the gardener McAllister, and the moon is full indeed.

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A Jeeves and Wooster novelTrapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably give way at the knees. For among those present were Florence Craye, to whom Bertie had once been engaged and her new fiancé 'Stilton' Cheesewright, who sees Bertie as a snake in the grass. And that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout, who is busy doing acts of kindness out of sheer malevolence. All Bertie's forebodings are fully justified. For in his efforts to oil the wheels of commerce, promote the course of true love and avoid the consequences of a vendetta, he becomes the prey of all and sundry. In fact only Jeeves can save him...

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