Philip Thody
Wodehouse and the Critics
When, in 1939, P. G. Wodehouse was given his Oxford D.Litt, F. R. Leavis commented in Scrutiny that ‘his humour is a cross of Prep-school and Punch, his invention puerile, and the brightness of his style the inane, mechanical brightness of the worst schoolboy slang’. Sir Roderick Glossop, Sir Watkin Bassett or even Aunt Agatha herself could not have put it better, and Leavis’s remarks were an uncanny premonition of the elbow which the Master was going to get from literary intellectuals as well as from flag-wagging popularists when he made such an ass of himself by broadcasting from Berlin in 1941.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad