Cocktail Time - Softcover

P. G. WODEHOUSE wrote more than ninety novels and some three hundred short stories over 73 years. 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 Medal 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.

This adventure of the suave, but loopy, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, is hilarious and well done. The portrayals of Ickenham's hapless relatives as they're enmeshed in his nets of imposture and misdirection are classics of their kind. Popular British narrator Frederick Davidson's male characters are well drawn, from the irascible to the befuddled, and the protagonist Ickenham is presented as properly debonair. But, he fails to distinguish the young women characters, all of whom have the same breathy, fatuously treacly voices. Immensely enjoyable listening. D.W. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine