This is a strange one. For some time I'd been aware of a massive and gaping hole in my reading life: I'd borrowed and read (and hugely enjoyed) my parent's copy of The Inimitable Jeeves while still at school, but beyond that I'd read nothing else by P G Wodehouse.
Last year I received the usual book token from the in laws for my birthday and after trekking off to my local Waterstones emerged some time later with a P G Wodehouse omnibus called The World of Blandings. beyond the fact that it contained the first novel in the Blandings series I knew little about it, and I'm afraid that life took over and for nearly 12 months the book sat on the shelf and rebuked me each time I walked past it.
And then, out of the blue came the chance for a business trip to India, which included an eight hour flight. Needless to say the book came with me and i finished the whole omnibus - two novels and several short stories - during the trip.
I can remember Wodehouse dying, but what I had not realised was that he had published so much before the First World War. The first of the Blandings novels is Something Fresh and it was published in 1915 after being serialised in a magazine: thus Wodehouse must have written it in 1913-1914, and it contains references to Lloyd George and the suffragettes. but the thought that struck me after I'd finished it was something altogether different: in the story Lord Emsworth is engaged in an endless battle of wits with Freddie Threepwood, his second son, who eventually marries an American and emigrates to the US, but we know that in the real world many second sons of the aristocracy (and indeed many first sons as well) did not survive the war.
There is no war or rumour of war in Blandings, but somehow Wodehouse continued to write about his earthly paradise for another 60 years. I now have the next three books in the sequence already on order.
Last year I received the usual book token from the in laws for my birthday and after trekking off to my local Waterstones emerged some time later with a P G Wodehouse omnibus called The World of Blandings. beyond the fact that it contained the first novel in the Blandings series I knew little about it, and I'm afraid that life took over and for nearly 12 months the book sat on the shelf and rebuked me each time I walked past it.
And then, out of the blue came the chance for a business trip to India, which included an eight hour flight. Needless to say the book came with me and i finished the whole omnibus - two novels and several short stories - during the trip.
I can remember Wodehouse dying, but what I had not realised was that he had published so much before the First World War. The first of the Blandings novels is Something Fresh and it was published in 1915 after being serialised in a magazine: thus Wodehouse must have written it in 1913-1914, and it contains references to Lloyd George and the suffragettes. but the thought that struck me after I'd finished it was something altogether different: in the story Lord Emsworth is engaged in an endless battle of wits with Freddie Threepwood, his second son, who eventually marries an American and emigrates to the US, but we know that in the real world many second sons of the aristocracy (and indeed many first sons as well) did not survive the war.
There is no war or rumour of war in Blandings, but somehow Wodehouse continued to write about his earthly paradise for another 60 years. I now have the next three books in the sequence already on order.
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