More than Writers

 I was surprised and delighted when our book club chose Wodehouse's The Inimitable Jeeves  recently. Surprised because he doesn't conform to current PC mindsets and delighted because I've been a fan from early teens. Are his books akin to the marmite love hate thing? One member overcame initial resistance, happy to read 'anything that sends up the aristocracy'. On that note, Orwell complained: 'Wodehouse's real sin has been to present the English upper classes as much nicer people than they are.' This is hard to support given that the aristos in his prolific output are populated by criminals, phonies and other disreputables. I had not dipped into his pages for years but still found the scenarios, characters and humour to be wonderfully relatable – despite a lack of upper class heritage. Words flow across the page as though they came effortlessly. Not always the case. Wodehouse said plots were the hardest to work out. He liked to 'think of some scene,...