Wodehouse gems

Ah, the joy of Wodehouse. I'm reading the first Blandings book Something Fresh and i came across Freddie Threepwood, removed from London and stuck in the country "with an air of crushed gloom which would have caused comment in Siberia"

I'm reading the very same book at the moment on my Kobo. Absolutely splendid stuff.

Somehow the voice in your head is always the ideal one with Wodehouse. The talking book versions are invariably read by Jonathan Cecil, who reads the great Plum's works with all the enthusiasm of a man with a pistol held at his temple. I do wish an enterprising publisher would arrange for some new recordings. With the television series on air it's the ideal time for, well, something fresh!

I wonder sometimes about Wodehouse and gloom: that particular example's obviously just a throwaway reference to the popular image of Russian literature, in the same sort of register as "The clicking of Cuthbert", but there are other places where he seems to be surprisingly well-read, e.g. in the two stories where he quotes extensively from Schopenhauer's Essay on Suicide (one of them is "Mr Potter takes a rest-cure", the other is a Blandings story).

When Timothy Spall has negotiated his fee for the audio-books, I do hope he reads them in the Brummie accent he used in Auf Wiedersehen Pet. That would be much funnier than the way he does Lord Emsworth.