posted on 07 Sep 2025

Service with a Smile by P.G. Wodehouse

I know that Wodehouse splits opinion – there are those who find him a constant source of enjoyment and others who are utterly mystified by what his acolytes find so enjoyable about the worlds he creates. I think if you’re tempted to pick up this Wodehouse it’s important to surrender to the fact that – as is the case with the vast majority of his books - you’ll find no attempt to be meaningful or deep. This is all about stepping into a fantasy world of the landed aristocracy that doesn’t and never has existed. In many ways it’s similar to the experience of the weekly children's comic; just as Desperate Dan or Denis the Menace live in a world in which they act totally within the logic of the cartoon, so Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance and the Duke of Dunstable exist only in the realm of the comic imagination. 

What Wodehouse is about here is giving you an entirely escapist experience: a dose of pure pleasure. And, as that heavyweight critic Samuel Johnson noted back in the 18th century:

 “Harmless pleasure is the highest praise. Pleasure is a word of dubious import; pleasure is in general dangerous, and pernicious to virtue; to be able therefore to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess.” 

This could almost be Wodehouse’s motto as a writer – ‘harmless pleasure’ is what he’s all about.

But humour is a tricksy thing in literature – there are always going to those that see the joke and those that don’t. Neither camp is right or wrong of course but if the residents of Blandings Castle don’t grab you, I’d stay well away from all things Wodehouse in the future if I were you.

Service with a Smile has a characteristically absurd storyline, at the centre of which is a plan to steal Lord Emsworth’s prize pig – The Empress of Blandings. Anyone at all familiar with the series of Blandings novels will know immediately what a heinous crime this represents and the fall-out from it will leave plenty of people with egg on their faces and some generous dollops of money changing hands – but, as always with Wodehouse, no-one seriously injured and an odd order of sorts always established. The key actor in this little drama turns out to be the ever-affable Lord Ickenham – Uncle Fred – who has a habit of both creating and solving the little dramas that swirl around all the other characters. Uncle Fred is one of Wodehouse’s best-loved creations – dapper, insouciant and huge of heart – but this book turned out to be the last of his four appearances.

This is very definitely a book for summer reading on a beach or on a journey because it requires the minimum of effort to just slip into the Blandings world and give yourself up to the general mayhem created by jilted lovers, scheming secretaries, American millionaires and daft old buffers.

Easily available in paperback, you’ll pick up a copy of this 1961 slice of Wodehouse’s world for well under £10.

 

Terry Potter

September 2025