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Tritt ein in eine Welt voller Geschichten

Hören und Lesen

Paul Kent

"Wooster", those who know me have sometimes said, "may be a pretty total loss during the daytime hours, but plunge the world in darkness, switch on the soft lights, uncork the champagne and shove a dinner into him, and you'd be surprised."The hilarious fictional world of P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse is a gourmand's paradise. From Bertie Wooster demolishingSylphides à la Crème d'Écrevisses, to Lord Emsworth tucking into a well-jammed roly-poly pudding, to a schoolboy toasting a muffin at the study fire, "browsing and sluicing" is not simply eating and drinking but a daily celebration of being alive. How many other writers actually make their readers feel hungry? Plum can ... and does, while alerting them to the perils of over-consumption, dieting and food fads.
So grab yourself a half bot of something half decent and settle back with this, the first of Paul Kent's occasional amuse-bouches on Wodehousean themes. Bon appétit!

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Food

"To the philosophical student of golf like myself" (said the Oldest Member), perhaps the most outstanding virtue of this noble pursuit is the fact that it is a medicine for the soul."
Sport, in the hilarious fictional world of P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse, is not exclusively about sweaty blokes in shorts, flannels or garish pullovers. Because they're only incidentally about the game in question, just about any-one, sports fan or not, can read his tales of the ring, pitch or links with unalloyed pleasure. So when he writes about cricket, rugby or golf, it's not all runs, tries and holes-in-one but friendship, competitiveness, and in the last of those sports, love. And being a tidy sportsman himself, he brings the ups and downs of playing the game vividly to life as few other writers can, for to Plum they were all part of the broader human comedy. So settle down in your deckchair with the second of Paul Kent's occasional essays on Wodehousean subjects – it's a trophy-winner!

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Sport

"Jeeves, I'm engaged."
"I hope you will be very happy, sir."
"Don't be an ass. I'm engaged to Miss Bassett."
P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse was the father of the modern rom-com. In his hilarious fictional world, love is all around, in the air and a many-splendoured thing. It's a fact of life, ready and waiting to be fallen in and out of by his men and women, be they willing volunteers, helpless victims, or, like Bertie Wooster, sprinting in the opposite direction ("The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.")
The third of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean leads us on a merry dance up those three steps to heaven, guiding us through some of the funniest and unlikely love stories ever written. An ideal present, in fact, for the love of your life.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Love

"[I'm] as broke as the ten commandments."
P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse knew a thing or two about the money-go-round; in 1938 he was the world's highest paid writer. At times, his financial affairs read like one of his own comic plots, as British and American tax inspectors chased him from pillar to post across two continents. Many of his characters are similarly afflicted: but whether they have too much or too little splosh in the old sock, they always seem to learn – in the funniest ways possible – that money is an excellent servant and a terrible master.
The fifth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean is packed with paupers and plutocrats, meritocrats and misers all mooching with Mammon. It most certainly is funny in this rich man's world!

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Money

"I am not very well up in the Peerage. I seldom read it except to get a laugh out of the names."
P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse rarely stood on ceremony, and the snooty English class system was a favourite target for his satire. A demolisher of privilege, pretension and snobbery, Plum presents us with a cavalcade of potty peers, dotty dowagers and perfidious plutocrats who anatomize the nation's social hierarchy more successfully than the fieriest political orator could ever manage – and all the while making us laugh.
The fourth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean takes us on a hilarious tour round 20th-century English society, proving time and again that in Plum's world rank is but a guinea stamp, and kind hearts are always worth more than coronets.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Class

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A.B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't. 
Whether you're a fan of cats, dogs, lions or even gnus, P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse has got your back. A lifelong animal-lover, he even founded a shelter
for strays – in addition to the pack of pekes, dachshunds, wolfhounds, cats, parrots and canaries that overran his home. Which is not to mention the cassowaries, gorillas, horses, snakes, rabbits, chimpanzees, alligators, newts, swans, and pigs that populate his masterful comedies.
The sixth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean features the entire menagerie. But it's the dogs and cats (along with their respective owners and staff) that are the real stars. Whichever claims your loyalty, with Wodehouse you're bound to see their funny side.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Cats & Dogs: And Other Animals

"It isn't half such a crazy place as it's made out to be. I know two- three people in Hollywood that are part sane."
A talking gorilla called Cyril who graduated from Oxford University; a sword-wielding diva driven crazy by her orange juice diet; an English milord swapping bodies with a gobby 12 year-old film star – these are screwball plots even by P. G. 'Plum' Wodehouse's brilliant comic standards. But not so surprising when we learn they take place in "the weirdest place" he had ever worked – Hollywood.
Paul Kent's eighth essay on matters Wodehousean is a backstage pass to "Dottyville-on-the-Pacific's" Golden Age in the 1930's, replete with glamour, glitter and the monstrous egos of its biggest movers and shakers. You'll be SHOCKED! You'll be THRILLED! – but above all, you'll be ENTERTAINED!

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Hollywood

"There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'""The mood will pass, sir."
Not only do trousers matter in the crazy world of P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse, they speak volumes: as does one's choice of suit, shirt, cuffs, studs, collar, tie, socks, shoes, spatterdashes, hat and stick. Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's "infallible" valet, is always there to guide us through this sartorial minefield, his trained eye able to spot the microscopic detail that separates the chic, de rigueur, and le dernier cri from the outré and farouche.
The seventh of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean takes us on a fascinating and informative tour of what the well-dressed man (and woman) should wear in order to look just right, transporting us back to an era of top hats, white ties and tailoring that positively reeks with 1920s and 30s elegance.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Fashion

"What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves?"
"Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake."
Children – or should we say "fiends in human shape" – tend to get a raw deal in the hilarious tales of P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse, coming out with things like "Daddee, are daisies little bits of the stars that have been chipped off by the angels?" or even "You've got a face like a fish!" When not turning the brains of normally sane, rational adults into soppy, sentimental lumps of blancmange, they are actually noisy, messy, cunning, and even venomous.
The ninth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean is a fascinating tour through Plum's alternative brand of tongue-in-cheek pedagogy, and a timely reminder that lurking somewhere in our adult selves is the child we all once were.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Childhood

So you've won the Scripture-knowledge prize, have you?""Sir, yes, sir.""Yes," said Gussie, "you look just the sort of little tick who would."
P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse has been described as "strenuously agnostic", yet he still wrote brilliantly, affectionately – and hilariously – about the Anglican Church. Brimming with over 50 clergymen of every rank (including the Reverends 'Pieface' Brandon and Sidney Potter-Pirbright who looks like he's been stuffed by an inexperienced taxidermist), his stories also contain over 2,300 quotations from the King James Bible, proving Plum knew his Acts from his Ezekiel.
The tenth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean takes us on a joyous journey from Plum's childhood visits to his four clerical uncles, to his later attendance at séances and his none-too serious musings on the Hereafter ("we'll have to wait and see"). Proof, if proof were needed that in Wodehouse World nothing, but nothing is sacred.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse - Die Buchreihe

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse - Die Buchreihe

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Hören und Lesen