The life and legacy of PG Wodehouse

There occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: “He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.” 

PG Wodehouse wrote these words for Bertie Wooster who, along with his valet Reginald Jeeves, remain his most high-profile creations. He could, arguably, have written them for himself.  

The extent to which Wodehouse’s inspiration for his fiction was autobiographical has been debated, but his writings about himself have the same endearing air of self-deprecation and a joyous childlike naiveté. He kept a low profile in life, mostly living in France or the eastern seaboard of the United States for much of his earthly sojourn.

But he did write. Prolifically and brilliantly. Ninety books, 40 plays and over 200 short stories flowed from his pen. Jeeves and Wooster, Psmith and the cast of Blandings were all the fruits of his brain. He also wrote the books for multiple Broadway shows, including Anything Goes.  

Yet public memorialisation of Wodehouse has been limited. His grave is in Remsenburg, New York. But in his own country – that whose eccentricities and charm he captured so brilliantly – there were fewer places to go for the general public who wished to pay their respects after his death in 1975. In part, this reflected that Wodehouse was not without controversy in the years after 1945.  

War of words

During the Second World War, a blithely unaware Wodehouse had allowed the German invasion of France – where he had lived since 1934 – to overtake him, and he became a prisoner at Le Touquet. Ignoring British commands to evacuate he suddenly found himself taken prisoner in his home as an ‘enemy alien’. 

Realising the value of their prize, the Nazi authorities co-opted Wodehouse into giving a number of broadcasts. None were at all political and all were directed at America.

The purpose was to offset the image of the Nazis as uncivilised – look how well they were treating the great humourist of the English language! Despite these caveats, the broadcasts went down very badly in Britain and the fact that Wodehouse allowed himself to be co-opted rankled some even up to his death. 

Yet, the broadcasts did not come to define Wodehouse, who continued to write for the whole 30 years of life he had after the war. It was as unlikely a figure as George Orwell who wrote probably the great defence of Wodehouse.

Orwell made a number of arguments but finished by pointing out, in essence, that Wodehouse had been writing books designed to aid escape from the horrors of the 20th century rather than engage with or encourage them. He remained ‘mentally in the Edwardian age’, as Orwell put it, and so to suggest he was an apologist for the horrible world that swept that supposedly happier time away forever was particularly ridiculous.

Nonetheless the controversy remained, coupled with a distaste for the joyful silliness of his prose by the grey new apparatchiks who came to dominate Britain by the 1960s and wanted to, in their own words, ‘eradicate… a Bertie Wooster image of the British character’. Wodehouse was only knighted a month before his death on account of these concerns. 

So, it was not an uncomplicated journey to the Abbey for Wodehouse, whose stone was placed there in 2019. Still on 14th February 2025 – a half-century since his death – actors, clergy, family members and long-standing lovers of his prose came together to lay flowers in Poets’ Corner to mark the anniversary. The brief address given by Tim Andrew, the Chairman of the PG Wodehouse Society, reminded the congregation of the judgement of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that Wodehouse was ‘the greatest of all English humourists’.

Andrew Bishop, the Editor of the society’s periodical, Wooster Sauce, described the transition from the service to the drinks to celebrate it as ‘redolent of returning victorious from a school hockey match’. 

Rightly so, for the man who was known as ‘Plum’ by his family and friends in life and by his aficionados in death, has his place amongst the literary giants of the nation. One suspects The Code of the Woosters has given more joy than, say, Ivanhoe. 

Reach for Plum 

His presence in the Abbey reflects the fact that – despite the controversy of the past – after 50 years Wodehouse’s appeal and popularity have never really faded. 

Why? Well fundamentally, he is too brilliant; too well-loved and with good reason. There is a lightness and sparkle to his prose, and that inherent escapism to his plots and characters which Orwell identified has ensured that he is, if anything, more read now in times where comfort and good humour are hard to come by. There is no better advice for when feeling glum than to reach for Plum. 

However, the skill of Wodehouse is much more impressive than his levity implies. The journalist Patrick Kidd observed that it was appropriate that Wodehouse had died on St Valentine’s Day given that, ‘he wrote so amiably about the messy hiccups of true love’. Given how badly some writers manage to deliver the goods on the same topic, this alone qualifies him for inclusion in the literary pantheon.

One might also observe that the crafting of comic prose is much more difficult than the writing of woe, or that to make people laugh is considerably more valuable a skill than making them cry. As Tim Andrew reminded attendees at the ceremony in February 2025, it is no coincidence that Wodehouse is second only to Shakespeare in terms of original entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. He was one of English’s great wordsmiths; it just so happens that he was a comic one.  

Perhaps the occasional sniffy attitude that one encounters with regard to Wodehouse was down to his wartime ambiguity, or perhaps because it reflects the fate of comic writers to be taken less seriously by the nation. After all, plenty of figures that are remembered in the literary corners of the Abbey – from Lord Byron to Ted Hughes – had their controversies, yet there was never any question about their inclusion.

There is also the fact that the English are really embarrassed when someone can make them laugh and fear being reminded of it. We might observe that it took Jane Austen much longer to get into the Abbey than the Brontës, and for comic titans like Saki, Evelyn Waugh and WS Gilbert, there remains no memorial at all.  

Wodehouse would have found the whole thing rather amusing, I suspect. It will come as no surprise to learn that he was philosophical about the role writing played in his life, certainly not seeing it in terms of the lofty vocation that some occupants of Poets’ Corner did. His craft was just something that he did and had almost always done. As he nonchalantly observed: ‘I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.’ 

If you find yourself ‘just loafing’ around the Abbey at any point – and there can be few better places for a spot of it – then do make your way to where Plum’s memorial is situated. St Irenaeus wrote that: ‘…the glory of God is man fully alive’. We are seldom more alive, I think, than when roaring with laughter. Interrupt your loaf and give thanks to God for a man who has made so many feel more fully alive than ever.  

Fergus Butler-Gallie is an author and the Vicar of Charlbury in Oxfordshire. He was the winner of the 2023 PG Wodehouse Essay Prize. His most recent book, 12 Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings that Made Christianity, tells the story of the centrality of physical space to the development of the Christian faith.