Service with a Smile
  • Published: 1 October 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099513995
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

Service with a Smile

(Blandings Castle)

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Oct 2008
EBook
1 Sep 2010
Hardback
15 Apr 2010
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'You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.' Stephen Fry

A Blandings novel

As a peer of the realm, Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has an occasional duty to leave the Empress of Blandings, surely the most considerable pig in the whole world, and travel to London for the opening of parliament. It comes hard to him, for he has a proper sense of the priorities in life, which rate pigs and flowerbeds higher than politicians.

But no sooner has he returned to Blandings than his real problems begin: the dastardly Duke of Dunstable is out to steal the Empress. His sister Lady Constance has inflicted on him a particularly nasty new secretary. And the Church Lads' Brigade are camped all over his lawns.

Thank God for the Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred, whose own particularly devious brand of sweetness and light aims to banish blackmailers and pig-stealers and restore true love all over the castle grounds.
  • Published: 1 October 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099513995
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

About the author

P.G. Wodehouse

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (always known as ‘Plum’) wrote about seventy novels and some three hundred short stories over seventy-three 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 ninety-three, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died shortly afterwards, on St Valentine’s Day.

Also by P.G. Wodehouse

Jeeves Again
A Life in Letters
According to Jeeves
Fine Weather, Jeeves
Nothing Serious
The Man Upstairs
Barmy in Wonderland
See all

Praise for Service with a Smile

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

Arabella Weir

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sebastian Faulks

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Kathy Lette

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

Douglas Adams

Sublime comic genius

Ben Elton

It's dangerous to use the word genius to describe a writer, but I'll risk it with him

John Humphrys

For as long as I'm immersed in a P.G. Wodehouse book, it's possible to keep the real world at bay and live in a far, far nicer, funnier one where happy endings are the order of the day

Marian Keyes

Wodehouse always lifts your spirits, no matter how high they happen to be already

Lynne Truss

The incomparable and timeless genius - perfect for readers of all ages, shapes and sizes!

Kate Mosse

Not only the funniest English novelist who ever wrote but one of our finest stylists

Susan Hill

P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply, or with quite as much wit and affection

Julian Fellowes

A genius ... Elusive, delicate but lasting

Alan Ayckbourn

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

Stephen Fry

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

Lindsey Davis

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

John Julius Norwich

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

Simon Brett

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

Simon Callow

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

Jane Moore

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

Joseph Connolly

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

Ben Schott

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

Adele Parks

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

Christopher Hitchens
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