I’ve been doing a lot of reading this summer and now have quite a backlog of books to blog about, so this is a short double whammy, mainly to remind myself of what I have read when I look back over the year. Most of my summer reads have been light ones, escapist books really because we had to have workmen in to sort out the house before putting the house up for sale and it’s all so stressful.

So My Man Jeeves is as you would expect, a collection of short stories which follow the usual pattern, with Jeeves always knowing better and coming to the rescue when things go pear-shaped. All jolly good fun and if you want to see what I mean you can download the book free from Project Gutenberg here.

The next Wodehouse book which I read was one I picked up at random from the library so is an actual book.

Titled Ukridge, the characters are new to me. To be precise we have Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge plus Corky Corcoran who is a young chappie built along similar lines to Wooster but with more in the way of brains. His old school pal is Ukridge, a ne’er-do-weel who is always skint, in fact relies on Corky for just about everything, including socks and shirts. Ukridge always has a crazy money making scheme on the go and is full of energy and confidence, no matter how many times things go disastrously wrong for him. As you can imagine, Corky takes the brunt of it all financially. Ukridge’s high-handed manner with Corky’s ‘man’ Bowles ensures undying loyalty from Bowles himself, so Corky is battling against Ukridge and Bowles, an uneven contest.

‘Light as a feather, but fabulous’ – Ben Elton says on the front cover, and I agree.

Ukridge’s middle name Featherstonehaugh is of course one of those surnames which isn’t pronounced as it looks, it is pronounced Fanshaw.