Cocktail Time (Everyman's Library)

Frederick, fifth Earl of Ickenham, is not the man to run away from other people's romantic problems, not even faces with the tangled relationships of his godson, Johnny, Johnny's girlfriend, Belinda, butler Albert Peasemarch and Peasemarch's beloved, Phoebe, who happens to be the sister of his employer, bad tempered Sir Raymond "Beefy" Bastable. Sir Raymond is himself in pursuit of Barbara Crowe.

Everything turns on the fate of the script for a film called Cocktail Time by Bastable's nephew, Cosmo Wisdom- but just to stir the mixture a little further, Wodehouse throws in American con artist Oily Carlisle. Now read on...

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (always known as `Plum') wrote more than ninety novels and some three hundred short stories over 73 years. He is widely recognised as the greatest 20th-century writer of humour in the English language. Perhaps best known for the escapades of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse also created the world of Blandings Castle, home to Lord Emsworth and his cherished pig, the Empress of Blandings. His stories include gems concerning the irrepressible and disreputable Ukridge; Psmith, the elegant socialist; the ever-so-slightly-unscrupulous Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred; and those related by Mr Mulliner, the charming raconteur of The Angler's Rest, and the Oldest Member at the Golf Club. In 1936 he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for `having made an outstanding and lasting contribution to the happiness of the world'. He was made a Doctor of Letters by Oxford University in 1939 and in 1975, aged 93, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died shortly afterwards, on St Valentine's Day.