This study of the life of P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), creator of the immortal Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves, seeks to penetrate the mind of a man who is difficult in some ways to fathom. Wodehouse's uneventful life--the life of a wealthy man of leisure who just happened to write brilliantly funny novels--was punctuated by the WW2 episode in which, interned by the Germans, he made facetious broadcasts for them that gave the impression that maybe they weren't such bad chaps, after all. Wodehouse's naive misjudgment made him unpopular in his native England, and was the cause of his eventual move to Long Island early in the'50s. Robert McCrum explores this incident and also the novels, and joins the chorus of those who consider the Bertie-and-Jeeves books to be not merely hilarious trifles but semi-serious examinations of the varieties of human nuttiness in the tradition of Jane Austen. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.