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Performing Flea

Known throughout the world as Britain's national humorist, honoured by Oxford University with degree of Doctor of Literature, and described by Hilaire Belloc as the best living writer of English of our time, P.G. Wodehouse has long stood in the forefront of contemporary writers. His name and characters have become part of the English language.

Yet there are few modern authors about whom less is known or more is speculated. A gentle, unassuming man, he has sidestepped personal publicity where he could, preferring to retire to quiet backwaters where he could devote himself to his two life interests- reading and writing. And much of his writing at such moments took the form of personal letters to friends- gay, self revealing documents that disclosed better than the pen of any biographer the true nature of the man.

Bill Townend- a friend of his boyhood days- was among the most regular of his correspondents, and this volume comprises a selection of the letters Wodehouse wrote to him over a period of more than thirty years. Beginning in the days when he was still struggling for recognition, the letters bridge the years to the present day. Shrewd and often deliciously funny, they tell of the people he meets, the books he is reading, and reveal the infinite care which goes into writing, rewriting and polishing of each new work that comes from his pen. The war years, life inside a German prison camp, his release from internment and the repercussions to the broadcasts he made from Germany to America form an important side of the book. Then come the post war years which show him working as prodigiously as ever, in his seventieth year.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 224
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780257661452
  • Genres
  • biography, writing, history, humor, autobiography
  • Release date
  • 1953