But endurance alone doesn't explain his success. It was what those words added up to that counted. In book after book, Wodehouse created a madcap Edwardian world populated by dimwitted sportsmen, stiff-upperlippers, innocent young lovers, shady American gangsters and formidable aunts. These characters had names like Gussie Fink-Nottle, Stiffy Byng, the Rev. H.P. ("Stinker") Pinker, Esmond Haddock, Freddy Widgeon and Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps. (Just reading that list makes you want to suddenly break out into one of John Cleese's silly walks.) They were always caught up in convoluted and interconnecting plots that always contrived to make them look ridiculous, and as the comical capers and misundertandings piled up, one on top of the other at breakneck speed, there was always the possibility that the entire house of cards could collapse. Readers could always expect by the end, however, that everything would be wrapped up in a nice neat bow, and that, order and peace would prevail once more.

It was this almost ritualistic predictablity--comic frenzy capped by a satistying resolution, that readers found so appealing. That and the immutable, unshakeable world in which these characters lived. Time marched on (and given Wodehouse vast age by the time of his death, it marched on for quite some time). Wars were fought, ideologies were fraught, but the world of Wodehouse, like a bug eternally trapped in amber, remained the same--Edwardian, innocent, unaware.

Sadly, it was precisely this blitheful innocence that left Wodehouse unprepared to meet his greatest challenge--the Nazis. Wodehouse and his wife Ethel were living in France when the Second World War broke out. Rather than hightailing it out of there, they dallied until the Nazis were almost on their doorstep, and by the time they tried to escape it was too late. At first, Wodehouse and Ethel (a formidable, if frivolous woman, as pleasure-loving and extroverted as her husband was ascetic and shy) were allowed to remain in their home. But Wodehouse and the other men in the area who were considered enemy aliens were soon shippped off and interned in prisoner of war camps. Conditions at these camps, first in Belgium and then in Germany were often deplorable, but Wodehouse, accustomed to such deprivations from his Dulwich days, wasn't fazed. As long as he could do his morning excercise routine (the "daily dozen" he performed every day of his adult life until no longer physically capable) and continue to write, he was perfectly content. Indeed, he enjoyed the cameraderie of this "boys only" milieu, shades again of public school, and the experience of mixing with men from all walks of life.

He might have continued to enjoy it if his identity hadn't come to the attention of his captors. When word of Wodehouse's predicament reached America, some of his influential fans there began lobbying the Nazis for his release. America was not yet entered the war and, the Nazis wanted to ensure it stayed that way. When they realized who they had in custody--the famous creator of Wooster and Jeeves--they decided to use him for propoganda purposes. Woodehouse, ninny that he was, let them, agreeing to record nine talks to be broadcast to America. The Nazis saw it as a chance to cast themselves in a more favourable ligtht; Wodehouse saw it as a way of letting his American fans know he was still in fine fettle, despite his imprisonment, and, stupidly, projected the old carefree, Edwardian, devil-may-care attitude that had brought him such success. Unfortunately, he was doing it in the context of a world war, broadcasting for an enemy doing its utmost to destroy his place of birth, and employing language and levity completely inappropriate to that place and time. Back home, his countrymen were being bombed and killed by the Luftwaffe while he waxed on, oblivious, about the comical aspects of being a prisoner of war. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. He had been branded a traitor and collaborator, defamed and reviled in the House of Commons, the press and on the BBC.