On this day in 1975 P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse died, aged ninety-three. Given the hundred books and the three-dozen musicals, it seems reasonable to believe the account of Wodehouse's final moments which has him collapsing after picking up the pen and papers his exasperated wife had thrown across his hospital room. But the other account is good, too: he died alone, his pipe and tobacco pouch in his lap, the manuscript of his next book on the table beside his chair. The unchallenged portrait of Wodehouse is of an amiable but removed man, one who was aware very early that he wanted to write, and who was happy to give up almost everything in order to do it ... FULL STORY »
