"I am not very well up in the Peerage. I seldom read it except to get a laugh out of the names." P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse rarely stood on ceremony, and the snooty English class system was a favourite target for his satire. A demolisher of privilege, pretension and snobbery, Plum presents us with a cavalcade of potty peers, dotty dowagers and perfidious plutocrats who anatomize the nation's social hierarchy more successfully than the fieriest political orator could ever manage – and all the while making us laugh. The fourth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean takes us on a hilarious tour round 20th-century English society, proving time and again that in Plum's world rank is but a guinea stamp, and kind hearts are always worth more than coronets.
