Jeeves and the British Empire

What on earth has PG Wodehouse, the creator of the Inimitable Jeeves and the hapless Bertie Wooster, got to do with a serious topic like the decline and fall of the British Empire? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is Quite a Lot.

The British Empire depended on splendid show and display, but that made it very vulnerable to ridicule. No-one was better placed to provide it than PG Wodehouse, son of an extensive family of senior Empire servants, but whose life had continually been blighted and his ambitions thwarted by the ups and downs of Britain's Empire story.

Jeeves and the British Empire tells the story of how Wodehouse used his comic creations to poke fun at those pompous stinkers who explored places and built Empires and then came home to bore everyone rigid with their tales of how they did it. From Baden-Powell's boy scouts to Sapper's imperial hero Bulldog Drummond - no Empire figure was safe from Wodehouse's leg-pulling.

Where Wodehouse led others followed. Film-makers and television producers took the hint and gleefully highlighted the absurdities of Empire. From the Boulting Brothers to Carry On Up the Khyber and the completely misjudged and misunderstood It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, this book shows how comedy took its cue from PG Wodehouse and held Britain's Empire up for laughs. Some Empires end with a bang, some with a whimper; the British Empire ended in irrepressible giggling - and PG Wodehouse can claim much of the credit.