P.G. 'Plum' Wodehouse is the greatest humorous writer England produced in the 20th century. The creator of Jeeves and Bertie, the Blandings saga, Ukridge, Mr Mulliner, Psmith and Uncle Fred, his output totalled almost 100 volumes of peerless comic invention. But where did all that material come from? Not just out of his head, no matter how large his hat size: in Wodehouse's case, much arrived courtesy of his voracious reading habits, everything from Shakespeare to W.S. Gilbert via the Bible, Tennyson, Sherlock Holmes, gung-ho schoolboy fiction, gory pulp thrillers, the gloopiest romances and literally hundreds of other writers - even T.S. Eliot. No other writer had a broader range of influences. In his latest groundbreaking study, Paul Kent, author of the Pelham Grenville Wodehouse trilogy of literary biographies teases out Plum's literary roots, and how he expertly blended elements from all these writers and genres into the heady cocktail that keeps the world laughing over a hundred
