Blandings Castle and Elsewhere

"This is a short story collection, which includes the great story “Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend”. Kipling said that it was “the most perfect short story ever written”. But I really chose this book because it contains his stories about Hollywood. When the talkies began, Wodehouse went to LA and was paid a vast amount of money for what he thought of as doing very little. He wrote something, then someone else re-wrote it, then it was re-written again and then they decided not to do it after all. There is a wonderful story in this book called “Monkey Business”, where he captures Hollywood as a strange wonderland where no one is really what they seem. The story is all about a gorilla impersonator. There was a craze for gorilla movies in the 1930s. It’s wonderfully full of cultural details, in the same way you might find in Evelyn Waugh’s novel The Loved One ."