From Publishers Weekly
In his authoritative biography of P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975), British author McCrum (My Year Off), literary editor of the Observer, rightly identifies the crisis over the great, if naïve, English humorist's 1941 radio broadcasts from Germany (which led to accusations of his being a "Nazi stooge") as "the defining moment of Wodehouse's life." While the broadcasts and their aftermath get the most scrutiny, McCrum ably surveys a 75-year writing career that began in 1900 and ended only with Wodehouse's death at 93. He succinctly covers all the major topics—Wodehouse's creation of the immortal Jeeves and Wooster; his triumphs as a lyricist for the musical theater; his frustrating stints as a scriptwriter in Hollywood; his tax troubles; his love of animals; his post-WWII U.S. exile; his long and successful, if apparently sexless, marriage. McCrum is franker on this latter subject than previous biographers and also dispels a myth or two. While Wodehouse largely left his financial affairs to his wife, Ethel, "in important literary business Wodehouse was always clinically decisive." When his new literary agent, Paul Reynolds Jr., wasn't successful, he fired him. Earlier studies have tended to be partisan or personal and stronger on some aspects of Wodehouse's varied life than others. For balance and readability, this popular biography, like Jeeves, stands alone. 16 pages of illus. not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
When reviewer Christopher Buckley respectfully restrains his frenetic pen, it’s clear we’re in the presence of a master. Acclaim for Wodehouse as a prose stylist, a humorist, a writerly model of Davidian proportions is effusive. The critics extend that praise to his biographer as well. McCrum wisely and dramatically scrutinizes Wodehouse’s international embarrassment while captive to the Nazis. This retelling also allows the author to clean off history’s grime and present a sympathetic picture of a man out of touch with his times. McCrum’s lucid writing even keeps the details of a rather unbothered life from becoming tedious. In the end, writers rush, as they always have, to quote P. G. Even the reviews of Wodehouse will send a reader darting to the bookshelf to get a fix of Jeeves, Psmith, Bertie, and the like.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From Booklist
This revealing biography of British novelist Wodehouse hinges on his wartime internment in Germany and its aftermath. In Wodehouse's disastrous 1941 decision to record a series of readings for Berlin Radio, McCrum discerns the political blindness of a gifted author whose work in farce and comedy had left him uninitiated into life's sterner realities. That initiation--belated and painful--came for Wodehouse when his Berlin broadcasts ignited a firestorm of denunciation. Government investigators eventually cleared him of charges of collaboration, but intense hostility in Britain still forced Wodehouse to relocate to the U.S., where he rehabilitated his reputation through a renewed commitment to his beguiling tales of Edwardian frivolity. In time, cultural heavyweights--including Wittgenstein, Welty, and Updike--were too busy praising Wodehouse's deft artistry to mention his wartime blunder. Curiously, though, by making Wodehouse's biggest mistake the very center of his biography, McCrum makes it easier for his many readers to forgive him as they renew their appreciation for the gifted creator not only of Bertie and Jeeves but also Psmith, Mulliner, and so many other delightful characters. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
A rich, vivid, and affectionate portrait of the most brilliant comic writer of the twentieth century. To Evelyn Waugh he was simply "the Master." He wrote ninety novels and story collections, and among his immortal characters are Jeeves, Psmith, and the Empress of Blandings (who is, of course, a pig). Equally impressive is the range of his devotees: Dorothy Parker, John Updike, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Salman Rushdie, John le Carré, and Seamus Heaney. Wodehouse had an extraordinary Broadway career, working with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and even dared to rewrite Cole Porter's Anything Goes for the London stage. Robert McCrum's magisterial biography chronicles the achievements and shadows of a gilded life. The ill-judged broadcasts from Berlin, where Wodehouse was interned during World War II, produced a violent backlash in England and tarred him, unfairly, as a Nazi sympathizer. His long love affair with America was compromised by endless acrimony with the IRS. This is the book all Wodehouse fans have been waiting for; it eclipses all previous accounts of his life. 16 pages of illustrations.


About the Author
Robert McCrum is the author of six novels and two works of nonfiction: The Story of English and My Year Off. He is the literary editor of the Observer and lives in London.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"P. G. Wodehouse is a comic writer of genius best known for Bertie Wooster and his omniscient manservant Jeeves: the pig-loving peer Lord Emsworth - and a regiment of aunts and butlers. But although Wodehouse and his work have become indissolubly part of the English language and literature, the writer himself is enigmatic. His life, notorious for one historic blunder during the Second World War, remains remarkably unexplored." "Based on research throughout Britain, Europe and the United States, Wodehouse: A Life goes deep beneath the surface of Wodehouse's extraordinary career, and reveals as never before the complexity of a writer who liked to maintain, against all the evidence, that his life was a 'breeze from start to finish'. In a portrait of a quintessential English writer and his times, Robert McCrum describes Wodehouse's beginnings in Edwardian London, his golden years on Broadway in Jazz Age America, and his adventures in thirties Hollywood. Wodehouse: A Life is a journey through some of the twentieth century's most turbulent decades, and it culminates in Wodehouse's controversial wartime experience: his internment in Nazi Germany and the broadcasts from Berlin, a fateful decision that haunted him to his death in 1975, and still affects his reputation." Wodehouse: A Life is the story of an Englishman who served to represent the essence of his age and country, but who, tragically, ended his life at odds with both. This biography brings to life the worlds of Wodehouse's century, while never forgetting for a moment his comic genius.

SYNOPSIS

To generations born a decade or more after the Second World War, P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1875) is a good, fun read and a prime source of humor perfect for public broadcasting. However, as journalist and author McCrum points out, toward the middle of his life Wodehouse emulated Wooster by broadcasting a series of talks on German radio during his internment in the Second World War. Wodehouse was apparently unaware of the consequences or the ramifications of his talks, which consisted largely of self- deprecating humor, but which also contained references to situations in Germany that implied all was a breeze, and no one had any need to worry much about the intentions of the Nazis. The rest of the world already knew better, and Wodehouse stopped being breezy, or funny, for a very long time to a large number of people. McCrum includes a welcome list of Wodehouse's literary progeny. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Janet Maslin - The New York Times

… Mr. McCrum, the literary editor of The Observer, faces formidable obstacles here - not least of them the existence of numerous other Wodehouse biographies, including a couple of recent ones. But he surmounts them with an invaluable portrait, thanks to a broad, incisive and complex understanding of Wodehouse's psyche. He also adroitly balances analysis of life and literature, mingling them aptly when necessary.

Stephen Fry - The Observer

While not claiming to be a literary biography, McCrum's book allows [the] connections between early life and final artistic flowering to be perfectly made. The rest is supremely well told and, considering its lack of eventfulness... surprisingly riveting.... No lover of Wodehouse will want to be without this masterly appraisal of the good life of a good man. Who happened to be a very, very great writer indeed.

Publishers Weekly

In his authoritative biography of P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975), British author McCrum (My Year Off), literary editor of the Observer, rightly identifies the crisis over the great, if na ve, English humorist's 1941 radio broadcasts from Germany (which led to accusations of his being a "Nazi stooge") as "the defining moment of Wodehouse's life." While the broadcasts and their aftermath get the most scrutiny, McCrum ably surveys a 75-year writing career that began in 1900 and ended only with Wodehouse's death at 93. He succinctly covers all the major topics-Wodehouse's creation of the immortal Jeeves and Wooster; his triumphs as a lyricist for the musical theater; his frustrating stints as a scriptwriter in Hollywood; his tax troubles; his love of animals; his post-WWII U.S. exile; his long and successful, if apparently sexless, marriage. McCrum is franker on this latter subject than previous biographers and also dispels a myth or two. While Wodehouse largely left his financial affairs to his wife, Ethel, "in important literary business Wodehouse was always clinically decisive." When his new literary agent, Paul Reynolds Jr., wasn't successful, he fired him. Earlier studies have tended to be partisan or personal and stronger on some aspects of Wodehouse's varied life than others. For balance and readability, this popular biography, like Jeeves, stands alone. 16 pages of illus. not seen by PW. (Nov. 29) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

McCrum, literary editor of the Observer (London), contends that P.G. Wodehouse's contributions to American and English literature have been largely overlooked. While one could challenge his conclusion that Wodehouse can be favorably compared with Jane Austen, McCrum does offer a thorough and readable account of his subject's long life and prolific literary career. McCrum takes the reader from Wodehouse's school days at Dulwich to his successful work as a Broadway lyricist and a master storyteller of Edwardian times who gave us Bertie Wooster and Jeeves to his darkest hour during World War II and final years of semi-exile in America. He offers his most spirited and convincing analysis in countering accusations that Wodehouse knowingly collaborated with the Nazis; his interpretation is entirely consistent with the portrait of "Plummie" as a shy man who dealt with painful realities by avoidance and by devotion to the works of his imagination. Though McCrum comes across as a bit of an apologist for Wodehouse, this work is thoroughly researched and well written; it will please Wodehouse aficionados and general readers alike. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/04.] Anthony J. Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews