Sunset at Blandings

In Wodehouse’s final novel, unfinished at his death, the author returns to his favourite part of England for one last time. In a classic plot, Vicky Underwood is parted from her fiancé, Jeff Bennison, which means that her uncle, Galahad Threepwood, has to engineer a complicated plot to bring them back together. Many old friends reappear to take their last bow: the Earl of Emsworth, Dame Daphne Winkworth, Beach the butler, the Empress of Blandings (Lord Emsworth’s prize pig), Freddie Threepwood (his son), G. Ovens, innkeeper, and an array of the earl’s formidable sisters. There may be trouble in the air, but at Blandings Castle it is always summer, always quiet and sunlit - and the powers of darkness are always ultimately defeated. Just how that defeat would have been brought about, had Wodehouse completed his story, is shown in the copious notes he made for it. These are included in this volume, together with commentary by Richard Usborne, Tony Ring and Norman Murphy.