Gussie Fink-Nottle's knowledge of the common newt is unparalleled. Drop him in a pond of newts and his behaviour will be exemplary, but introduce him to a girl and watch him turn pink, yammer, and suddenly stampede for great open spaces. Even with Madeline Bassett, who feels that the stars are God's daisy chain, his tongue is tied in reef-knots. And his chum Tuppy Glossop isn't getting on much better with Madeline's delectable friend Angela.

With so many broken hearts lying about him, Bertie Wooster can't sit idly by. The happiness of a pal - two pals, in fact - is at stake. But somehow Bertie's best-laid plans land everyone in the soup, and so it's just as well that Jeeves is ever at hand to apply his bulging brains to the problems of young love. Along with The Code of the Woosters, Right Ho, Jeeves is considered by many his finest comic novel - and perhaps the finest in the English language.

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (always known as ‘Plum’) wrote more than ninety novels and some three hundred short stories over 73 years. He is widely recognised as the greatest 20th-century writer of humour in the English language.

Perhaps best known for the escapades of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse also created the world of Blandings Castle, home to Lord Emsworth and his cherished pig, the Empress of Blandings. His stories include gems concerning the irrepressible and disreputable Ukridge; Psmith, the elegant socialist; the ever-so-slightly-unscrupulous Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred; and those related by Mr Mulliner, the charming raconteur of The Angler’s Rest, and the Oldest Member at the Golf Club.

In 1936 he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for ‘having made an outstanding and lasting contribution to the happiness of the world’. He was made a Doctor of Letters by Oxford University in 1939 and in 1975, aged 93, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died shortly afterwards, on St Valentine’s Day.