Penguin What Ho!: The Best of Wodehouse Вудхаус Пелам Гренвилл

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

The nearest Wodehouse ever came to a serious story, The Coming of Bill is a fascinating blend of social comment and light comedy. It concerns the offspring of Ruth, a spoilt heiress, and Kirk, an impecunious artist of perfect physique, brought together by Ruth’s aunt, a believer in eugenics. The young couple are eventually successful in retrieving their child and their marriage from the influence of the overbearing Mrs Porter, but only after a series of comic mishaps in a book which features a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters, including the bossy aunt, a tetchy millionaire, a good-natured ex-boxer and an orotund English butler

The Adventures of Sally is a transatlantic comedy set in worlds Wodehouse knew well: American theatres, English country houses, and the theatrical boarding-houses where young men and women dream of finding fame and fortune. Coming into a modest inheritance, one of these young women, Sally, is able to leave her boarding-house at last, and looks forward to a quiet life in a small apartment. Instead, she finds herself swept up in a series of adventures with her ambitious brother and her playwright fiance, along with an accident-prone, dog-loving Englishman she meets on a French beach and his supercilious cousin, who pursue her across the Atlantic. While losing most of her inheritance backing a play, she sheds the unsatisfactory fiance, rejects the supercilious cousin, falls in love with the accident-prone Englishman, and finds happiness in a kennel on Long Island

Who but P.G. Wodehouse could have extraced high comedy from the most noble and ancient game of golf? And who else could have combined this comedy with a real appreciation of the game, drawn from personal experience? Wodehouse's brilliant but humane brand of humour is perfectly suited to these stories of love, rivalry, revenge and fulfilment on the links. While the oldest member sits inside the clubhouse quoting Marcus Aurelius on patience and wisdom, outside on the green the strongest human passions burn. All human life is here, from Sandy McHoots, the cocky professional, to shy Ramsden Waters, whose only consolation in life is golf. Even golf-haters will not be able to resist stories which perfectly combine physical farce and verbal wit with a gallery of unforgettable characters

If you come into a lot of money, life becomes easier, right? No, wrong - at least not for Sally Nicholas, whose generosity of spirit leaves her wide open to all the slings and arrows outrageous fortune can send. Her handsome fiance turns out not to be all he seems - and then there is the show he's written, which Sally puts on in the theatre. No, life is not straightforward at all. But waiting in the wings is Ginger Kemp, who really does adore her, seems to make a hash of everything he tries and yet is always ready to try something else. If money becomes a problem, perhaps Ginger can provide a solution

Пелэм Вудхаус: Мир Дживса • Сборник замечательных рассказов о Дживсе и Вустере, специально отобранных и представленных самим Вудхаусом, который был поражен размером своей подборки и описал ее как почти идеальное пресс-папье. Как он писал • "Теперь, когда я так много написал о нем, мне кажется любопытным вспомнить, как мягко и недраматично Дживс впервые вошел в мой маленький мирок. Что характерно, он не стал выпячиваться вперед. В тот раз он произнес всего две строчки • Первым был • - К вам миссис Грегсон, сэр • Второй • - Очень хорошо, сэр, какой костюм вы наденете? • Только некоторое время спустя до меня дошли качества этого человека. Я до сих пор краснею при мысли о том, как бесцеремонно я обошелся с ним при нашей первой встрече..." • В этот сборник вошли "Продолжай, Дживс", "Неподражаемый Дживс", "Очень хорошо, Дживс" и рассказы "Дживс готовит омлет" и "Дживс и жирная птица"

A Blandings Omnibus In this wonderfully fat omnibus, which seems to span the dimensions of the Empress of Blandings herself (the fattest pig in Shropshire and surely all England), the whole world of Blandings Castle is spread out for our delectation: the engagingly dotty Lord Emsworth and his enterprising brother Galahad, his terrifying sister Lady Constance, Beach the butler (his voice 'like tawny port made audible'), James Wellbeloved, the gifted but not always sober pigman, and Lord Emsworth's secretary the Efficient Baxter, with gleaming spectacles, whose attempts to bring order to the Castle always end in disarray. Lurking in the wings is Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, the neighbour with designs on the Prize which must surely belong to the Empress

П.Г. Вудхаус был, по общему мнению, самым блестящим автором английской комедии двадцатого века, одинаково прославленным по обе стороны Атлантики. Он добился необычного отличия, сочетая максимально широкую популярность с высочайшими литературными стандартами, завоевав как преданность читателей, так и уважение своих коллег - от Хилэра Беллока до Грэма Грина • Эта антология включает в себя два романа, четырнадцать рассказов и выдержки из автобиографии Вудхауса. "Кодекс Вустеров" был написан в 1938 году, "Дядя Фред" - весной 1939 года, когда Вудхаус был на пике своего могущества. В рассказах представлены все самые известные творения Вудхауса – Дживс и Вустер, Укридж, Бинго Литтл, мистер Муллинер, графы Эмсуорт и Икенхэм. Наконец, выдержки из "Более чем семидесяти", мемуаров, столь же забавных и прекрасно написанных, как и романы, дают представление об отношениях и рабочих привычках очень замкнутого человека

'P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply, or with quite as much wit and affection' • Julian Fellowes • Weekend Wodehouse - required reading at country house parties in the late Thirties - remains one of the best introductions to the work of PG Wodehouse. All the favourites are here: Drones Club stories, Mr Mullinger stories, stories of Jeeves, Lord Amsworth and Ukridge

This charming novel is one of Wodehouse’s best late works. The vintage plot concerns a Gainsborough miniature, a mouldering country house, an overweight solicitor, a fortune-hunter, a butler who isn’t a butler, an American corporate lawyer and his kleptomaniac sister; but the heart of the story – in every sense –concerns Jerry West and his determined pursuit of air hostess Jane Hunnicutt. When Jane unexpectedly becomes a millionairess, Jerry despairs of wooing her, but the sun never goes behind a cloud for long in Wodehouse: Jerry gets his Jane in the end, but only after a series of trials which raise the comic stakes to the author’s highest level

A classic musical comedy plot turned into a novel, The Prince and Betty is the story of a man who gives up everything for his girl. Fortunately, she chances to be the stepdaughter of a millionaire • John Maude and Betty Silver are in love, but when John turns out to be heir to the principality of Mervo, a small Mediterranean island not a thousand miles from Monte Carlo, he finds himself ensnared in the establishment of a new casino, much to his beloved's high-minded disgust. She leaves him and takes a job with an American family in London; he abandons his post to follow her • Eventually their misunderstandings are disentangled, and in the process of telling their story, published early in his career, Wodehouse constructs the critique of Europe versus America, privilege versus enterprise, decadence versus adventure, which was to underpin many of his later tales

Bertie may be in danger of having his spine severed in five places by that jealous gorilla G. D'Arcy (Stilton) Cheesewright, but, as Jeeves insists, the priorities still have to be observed. And so, thanks to Jeeves, they are throughout this bumper volume, whatever mayhem may be loosed upon the befuddled head and generous heart of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. Gathered in this volume are three of Wodehouse's hilarious Jeeves and Wooster novels: Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and Jeeves in the Offing