He had created a world that was complete, self-sufficient and almost faultless

The man and his work were one. Evelyn Waugh later described Wodehouse’s work as timeless, but it is also immutable. The comparative lack of development in his writing is one of its unique features: no other twentieth-century English writer of consequence evolved in his mature work as little as Wodehouse. He had created a world that was complete, self-sufficient and almost faultless.

R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004), 371

The moral test with which Wodehouse was confronted in June 1941 was one that was beyond him

The moral test with which Wodehouse was confronted in June 1941 was one that was beyond him. In addition to his upbringing, there was his temperamental preference for finding the easiest way out of a tricky situation – and his obsessive commitment to his writing. It is these two factors that colour his actions with the taint of irresponsibility. Combined with his failure to understand the nature of Nazism, they proved fatal to his reputation.

R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004), 305

Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots

Wodehouse was not alone in flirting with the studios. The talkies had triggered a new gold rush, anticipated by Herman Mankiewicz when in 1925, after a visit to the West Coast, he had cabled his friend Ben Hecht, saying: ‘Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.’ Post-war Hollywood was challenging New York, where the first big studios had been based. The movie-makers’ desperate need for Broadway talent, people who could supply dialogue and scenarios, inspired a westward stampede of playwrights and short story writers. The exodus from the East was, Wodehouse wrote later, ‘like one of those great race movements of the middle ages’.

R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004), 184

Change in to white flannels, play from midday to sundown, breaking only for a cold lunch and a pint or two in the pavilion

Every summer weekend during this opulent decade, young men from the City, or the Imperial Civil Service, or the newspaper and magazine world of Fleet Street and the Strand, would take the train to some nearby provincial town, Tunbridge Wells perhaps, or Stevenage. There, they would throw their heavy cricket bags onto the horse-drawn carriage awaiting them at the station, then rattle through leafy summer lanes to the ground, change in to white flannels, play from midday to sundown, breaking only for a cold lunch and a pint or two in the pavilion, before returning to the City in the fading light of summer.

R. McCrum, Wodehouse: a life (2004), 77

The old postcards to not detect Maurilia as it was but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia

It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old postcards to not detect Maurilia as it was but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

I. Calvino, Invisible cities (1972), tr. W. Weaver (1974),  27 

Fifty-six units a week as the safe upper limit for male alcohol consumption

Back in 1982 both the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Medical Journal’s ABC of alcohol were giving fifty-six units a week as the safe upper limit for male alcohol consumption. Yet, five years later, this limit was reduced to twenty-one units a week, without any reasons for the change being given and without there being any substantive new research to back it up.

A. Barr, Drink: a social history (1995), 321

His Majesty was brought up on beer and so were his ancestors and his officers

It is disgusting to notice the increase in coffee used by my subjects and the amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. His Majesty was brought up on beer and so were his ancestors and his officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended on to endure hardship or beat his enemies in the case of the occurrence of another war.

Frederick the Great of Prussia, 1777. Quoted in A. Barr, Drink: a social history (1995), 212-3