The wonder of Wodehouse

I have a confession to make, which may upset many readers. Having only a passing acquaintance with his books, I’ve long experienced a faint allergic reaction to the works of P.G. Wodehouse. It is, I think, to do with the mannered, heavily whimsical nature of his world; the circumlocutory sentences; the “right-ho”s and “dash it”s and choreographed mix-ups; and the inexplicably passionate adoration of his many fans, among whom I count a number of my family and friends.

But before dismissing something that so many intelligent people hold in high esteem, it’s worth considering whether I’ve missed a trick. And so, in the hope that enthusiasm is contagious, I’ve been listening to The World of Wodehouse, a podcast hosted by the British comedian Alexander Armstrong, which marks the 50th anniversary of its subject’s death with a series of personal reflections from fans.

Armstrong himself is president of the P.G. Wodehouse Society, and clearly enamored of “Plum,” as the author was known to pals, calling him “arguably the greatest humorist of the 20th century.” Although Plum was happily married to a war widow called Ethel, with a stepdaughter Leonora, his most famous creation Bertie Wooster negotiated many entanglements without ever succumbing to matrimony at all: his true partner, of course, was his loyal, watchful valet Jeeves.

The comedy arises in the space between Wooster’s cheerful, crashing tactlessness and Jeeves’s wily diplomacy, which allows for the sly play of language. When Wooster is trying to establish if Jeeves has met his old friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, who has a “face like a fish,” for example, he nudges his valet, “And looked like something on a slab?” to which Jeeves replies: “Possibly there was a certain suggestion of the piscine, sir.”

The writer Lynne Truss recalls the author’s aphorism that, “golf, like measles, should be caught young.” Perhaps the same might be said of P.G. himself. Stephen Fry, who played Jeeves in the 1990s television series, recalls how his godmother gave him a copy of Very Good, Jeeves for his tenth birthday, and “it was as if a new planet had swum into my ken”; the joy intensified when he wrote a letter to Wodehouse and got one back, with a signed photograph.

The public outrage in wartime Britain was such that Wodehouse came to live in America – and stayed here

When he was 11, the comedian Ben Elton was bought the short stories Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, which he calls “one of the most pivotal moments of my life.” There is indeed a particular stage in childhood when one is a uniquely willing captive for funny writers: I remember a similar knockout delight in the American humorist James Thurber.

This podcast feels more like a pleasurable pow-wow for existing admirers than a bid for new converts, but it does act as a reminder that Wodehouse was a master of the zinger. It also made me want to revisit how his benignly self-contained universe – in which, as his biographer Robert McCrum observed, “the worst thing that can happen is somebody punctures your hot water bottle” – metabolized genuine menace.

In literature, he reduced it to mockery, as with his depiction of the “frightful ass” Roderick Spode, a caricature of Oswald Mosley. In life, he clung doggedly to his playful, imaginative world even while interned by Nazi Germany and engulfed in an increasingly grotesque reality.

That partly explains his great miscalculation in doing five attemptedly light-hearted broadcasts from Berlin on German radio in 1941, which he naively imagined would reassure his fans. Instead the public outrage in wartime Britain was such that Wodehouse came to live in America and stayed here. Officially forgiven at last by prime minister Harold Wilson, he received a knighthood just a few weeks before he died, aged 93, in Long Island. One has the feeling, even now, that England is still trying to make it up to him.

The pain of public shaming is a more explicit theme of another recent podcast: Reclaiming, hosted by Monica Lewinsky, who was only 24 in 1998 when she was the subject of a “global scandal” over her sexual encounters with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. Today she is 51, glossy and chic, and the first guest on her series is herself: she talks movingly with one of the show’s producers about being pushed into the burning glare of publicity, and the horror of realizing that her erstwhile confidante Linda Tripp had secretly recorded her “for 20 hours, sounding like an idiot, talking about very personal things.”

There was little public female solidarity with a young girl who had made a foolish mistake: I remember feminists such as Erica Jong and Nancy Friday making jarringly caustic remarks about her, and here she recalls being crushed by hearing a female commentator opining on the radio about how unimaginable it would be if your son brought Monica Lewinsky home and wanted to marry her.

In other episodes, Lewinsky interviews stars such as the actors Molly Ringwald and Alan Cumming about their own traumas, successes and turbulent experiences in younger years. She has, understandably, been through industrial amounts of therapy: the interviews are long and somewhat free-ranging, but she is a sympathetic and astute host. And after so many years buried beneath other people’s jibes and misconceptions, you can’t help but issue a little cheer that Monica has surfaced properly at last.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2025 World edition.