Previously seen on: Overland Journal Europe.
A Damsel in Distress
By P.G Wodehouse
Everyman Classics – ISBN – 978-1-84159-124-7
I bought this book from Hatchard’s Piccadilly two weeks before Christmas in the hope I would sit by the fire and read it from start to finish. The book didn’t even make Christmas week. Cover to cover a total farce and you know it would be from the off. I have a new hard back version, but in my 1964 Series 2a Land Rover I have plenty of second hand soft back P.G Wodehouse stories – always at the ready for when my car might want to take a break from a journey.
Whichever story you choose from this sublime storyteller you will be most amused on every page turn. This one, my damsel in distress, we find the Earl of Mashmoreton’s lively daughter thinking she is love with Geoffrey Raymond but along comes along a cheerful American song-writer George Bevan with just one meeting with him when she climbs into his passing cab to escape her pompous brother – wait are we already confused? Good, this story gets increasingly entwined and you will simply have to read it to know what on earth I am talking about.
There’s a butler a page, an aunt and of course the father who – surprisingly – or perhaps not so – stays in his garden, gardening whilst the whole farce begins to take shape. What happens at the end you may ask? I shan’t tell you. A lot happens before the end happens – is all I shall say. P.G Wodehouse is necessary for the avid traveller. Short stories to let you escape from wherever you are. Best to find him in a second-hand bookshop. If you discover a first edition – at a decent price. Bag it, it is Priceless.
