Category: PG Wodehouse

Our Dumb Chums

I have been reflecting on the largish number of PG Wodehouse stories that feature animals and birds. Cats, dogs, pigs, parrots, canaries fairly throng the pages and I wondered if this might be an angle worth exploring.

Cocktail Time

Frederick, 5th Earl of Ickenham, is my favourite PG Wodehouse character and if you have the misfortune not to be acquainted with him where better to be introduced than by reading Cocktail Time, published in 1958. Then you can call him Uncle Fred.

Comfort Reading

In the autumn of 1972 I was invited to stay with Baron and Baroness von V-S on their estate in Germany. A Mercedes was at the station to meet me driven by a tweedy type who spoke no English. It dawned on me that this was not the Baron but his chauffeur. A parp on… Continue reading Comfort Reading

Theorbo Time

You don’t see a theorbo for years and then two come along together. About ten years ago I went to a concert at St Paul’s School to raise money for Venice in Peril.

Dou at Dulwich

  The Dulwich Picture Gallery doesn’t get the visitors it deserves because it’s not on the tube. It is a ten minute hop on the overground from Victoria to Dulwich West and then a ten minute walk through the leafy purlieus of Dulwich.

A Walk in the Park

The Yellow Earl’s London house was in Carlton House Terrace. It was in fact two houses knocked into one. Here is an extract from The Yellow Earl, Douglas Sutherland’s excellent biography of the 5th Earl of Lonsdale.

From Wodehouse to Wittgenstein

Anthony Quinton presented Round Britain Quiz but the rest of the time was a philosopher based in Oxford: fellow of All Souls, fellow of New College and president of Trinity College.

Under the Weather

I felt a tad under the weather one morning earlier this week. I put it down to a rare tropical disease I might have caught in Singapore in ’89, or possibly a merry dinner in Parsons Green the night before. (Parsons Green lost its apostrophe just before World War I.)