Monitor | PG Wodehouse

Starting with footage of PG Wodehouse at home in the Hamptons on New York's Long Island, this interview shows the author at his genial and self-deprecating best. Wodehouse cheerfully discusses his long writing career, his eschewal of 'serious' fiction and the lack of sex in his books.

The wartime broadcasts referred to in this interview occurred when Wodehouse and his wife were trapped at their home in France by the outbreak of World War II. The couple were interned by the Germans until 1941, when Wodehouse was released and taken to Berlin, where he was tricked into making light-hearted broadcasts to the US about his experiences as a prisoner. Although the transmissions were innocuous, public opinion in the UK and America believed Wodehouse to be a collaborator and even a Nazi sympathiser. All charges against him were later investigated by MI5 and found to be untrue. As the Foreign Office report said, 'Mr Wodehouse made the celebrated broadcasts in all innocence and without any evil intent.'