Full Moon

Description

Had his only contribution to literature been Lord Emsworth and Blandings Castle, his place in history would have been assured. Had he written of none but Mike and Psmith, he would be cherished today as the best and brightest of our comic authors. If Jeeves and Wooster had been his solitary theme, still he would be hailed as The Master. If he had given us only Ukridge, or nothing but recollections of the Mulliner family, or a pure diet of golfing stories, Wodehouse would nonetheless be considered immortal. That he gave us all those and more - so much more - is our good fortune and a testament to the most industrious, prolific and beneficent author ever to have sat down, scratched his head and banged out a sentence.' Stephen Fry 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.

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (always known as 'Plum') wrote about seventy novels and some three hundred short stories over seventy-three years. He is widely recognised as the greatest 20th-century writer of humour in the English language. Perhaps best known for the escapades of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse also created the world of Blandings Castle, home to Lord Emsworth and his cherished pig, the Empress of Blandings. His stories include gems concerning the irrepressible and disreputable Ukridge; Psmith, the elegant socialist; the ever-so-slightly-unscrupulous Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred; and those related by Mr Mulliner, the charming raconteur of The Angler's Rest, and the Oldest Member at the Golf Club. In 1936 he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for 'having made an outstanding and lasting contribution to the happiness of the world'. He was made a Doctor of Letters by Oxford University in 1939 and in 1975, aged ninety-three, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died shortly afterwards, on St Valentine's Day.

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in. * Evelyn Waugh * Nothing will ever dim the brilliance of Wodehouse's world or flatten his ever-sprightly and always entertaining prose -- John Mortimer * The Sunday Times * Pure word music * Douglas Adams * The Everyman edition promises to be a splendid celebration of the divine Plum * The Independent * The handsome bindings are only the cherry on top of what is already a cake without compare * Evening Standard *