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P. G. Wodehouse and the costs of innocence

Discussed in this essay:

P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters, edited by Sophie Ratcliffe. W. W. Norton. 624 pages. $35.

When a German soldier marched into P. G. Wodehouse’s home in France, in 1940, and gave the distinguished author ten minutes to pack, “Plum,” as his wife Ethel had it, “went off with a copy of Shakespeare, a pair of pajamas, and a mutton chop.” Interned by the Nazis in a former lunatic asylum in Upper Silesia, the writer of stories about Lady Betty Bootle and Beefy Bingham reported that prison camp was “rather like being on the road…

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is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. His latest book, The Man Within My Head, about Graham Greene and British boarding schools, came out in paperback in January.

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