Joy in the Morning (33 page)

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P.G. Wodehouse

The 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?

The kindly but shrewd gaze of the Oldest Member picks out some of the funniest stories Wodehouse ever wrote.

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P.G. Wodehouse

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 becomes rather good at it and manages to go to pieces with his eyes open.

But no sooner has Jimmy cut a 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. Does he deserve a happy ending? Read and find out.

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P.G. Wodehouse

This is the first Blandings novel, in which P.G. Wodehouse introduces us to the delightfully dotty Lord Emsworth, his bone-headed younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, his long-suffering secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and Beach the Blandings butler.

As Wodehouse wrote, ‘without at least one impostor on the premises, Blandings Castle is never itself. In
Something Fresh
there are two, each with an eye on a valuable scarab which Lord Emsworth has acquired without quite realizing how it came into his pocket. But of course things get a lot more complicated than this . . .

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P.G. Wodehouse

Uncle Fred is one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet. Or as he crisply said, ‘There are no limits, literally none, to what I can achieve in the springtime.’

Even so, his gifts are stretched to the limit when he is urged by Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, from the enforced slimming cure of the haughty Duke of Dunstable. Pongo Twistleton knows his debonair but wild uncle shouldn’t really be allowed at large – especially when disguised as a brain surgeon. He fears the worst. And his fears are amply justified.

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P.G. Wodehouse

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.

Also available in Arrow

P.G. Wodehouse

The Empress of Blandings, prize-winning pig and all-consuming passion of Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has disappeared.

Blandings Castle is in uproar and there are suspects a-plenty – from Galahad Threepwood (who is writing memoirs so scandalous they will rock the aristocracy to its foundations) to the Efficient Baxter, chilling former secretary to Lord Emsworth. Even Beach the Butler seems deeply embroiled. And what of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Clarence’s arch-rival, and his passion for prize-winning pigs?

With the castle full of deceptions and impostors, will Galahad’s memoirs ever see the light of day? And will the Empress be returned . . . ?