Why are the Japanese obsessed with butlers? Kazuo Ishiguro’s Man Booker winner in 1989, The Remains of the Day, has a butler as its central character.
When it came out I was puzzled that it could have been penned by a Japanese author. I was unaware that he had come to live in England aged five. Now, if I may slightly digress, I find my friends on the cusp of retirement looking forward to having more time to read. My own programme hasn’t been especially ambitious but I have read all the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis letters, all James Lees-Milne’s diaries and A Dance to the Music of Time. I am considering re-reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series next.
The Empress of Japan, on the cusp of retirement, has also expressed a desire to read more and PG Wodehouse is her choice; specifically books about Jeeves. This should come as no surprise, her own title is of course an homage to the Empress of Blandings. At present there are fourteen Jeeves books available in Japanese. Hitherto sales were sluggish – some hundred copies annually. Now they are selling a hundred a day and have reprinted 20,000 copies.
What might other Heads of State and Prime Ministers choose? Almost any deposed dictator, Frozen Assets; President Trump, Money in the Bank; President Clinton, Bill the Conqueror; Lady Thatcher, The Girl in Blue; Jean-Claude Juncker, A Few Quick Ones …
I heard Tony Ring’s talk at the British Museum last week: The Wit and Wisdom of PG Wodehouse. He was to a large extent speaking to the converted but Plum’s gags don’t stale and there were as many ripples of appreciative laughter as Jeeves encounters fishing at Herne Bay.