`You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.' Stephen Fry
Synopsis - When Alaric, Duke of Dunstable decides to take Empress of Blandings away from her loving master and get her fit, Lord Emsworth calls in the services of the redoutable Uncle Fred. Fred arrives full of the joys of spring, with nephew Pongo Twistleton and old friend Polly Pott in tow, and despite the efforts of the efficient Baxter, endeavours to scupper the Duke and to bring together a variety of romantic couplings.
A Blandings novel
Uncle Fred is one of the hottest earls that ever donned a coronet. Or as he crisply said, ‘there are no limits, literally none, to what I can achieve in the springtime.’
Even so, his gifts are stretched to the limit when he is urged by Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, from the enforced slimming cure of the haughty Duke of Dunstable. Pongo Twistleton knows his debonair but wild uncle shouldn’t really be allowed at large – especially when disguised as a brain surgeon. He fears the worst. And his fears are amply justified.