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Blandings: Problems With Drink
Blandings: Problems With Drink
Jul 21, 2025 9:12 AM

Author:P.G. Wodehouse

Blandings: Problems With Drink

EPISODE 6 IN A MAJOR BBC DRAMA STARRING TIMOTHY SPALL, DAVID WALLIAMS AND JENNIFER SAUNDERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS GALAHAD AT BLANDINGS

With the arrival of sophisticated widow, Daphne, and her spoiled brat Huxley, Connie once again forces Clarence to look presentable.

However, when Daphne flirts with Clarence and takes an interest in his pig, Beach and Connie become suspicious of Daphne’s motives.

Freddie, though, has foresworn all involvement in love affairs – only to find an irresistible beauty, Monica, working in the pig-sty.

‘Sublime comic genius’

Ben Elton

‘You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.’

Stephen Fry

‘The funniest writer ever to put words to paper.’

Hugh Laurie

‘P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply, or with quite as much wit and affection.’

Julian Fellowes

Reviews

This is a comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement

—— Elizabeth Jane Howard

Of all the novelists that have made their bow since the war she seems to me to be the most remarkable...behind her books one feels a power of intellect quite exceptional in a novelist

—— Sunday Times

Immensely readable...Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply

—— Philip Toynbee

Throughout his ordeal, as Arn turns from captive to child soldier to refugee, he speaks in the imperfect cadences of the English he only learned years later. It's a wise narrative choice: Telling Arn's story this way creates a sense of foreignness that feels right, and gives rise to the accidental poetry of faulty translation.

—— The Wall Street Journal

I was enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies

—— Marina Warner , Guardian

Shows sensitivity in exploring an entire shadowland of human experience just beyond the reach of words, and could be said to be a culminating point in the author's career

—— The Times Literary Supplement

Katsu’s seductive second book in her supernatural thriller trilogy picks up where her well-received debut, The Taker, left off... At times melodramatic and constrained by the limitations of a middle volume, this installment stays true to its author’s initial vision.

—— Publishers Weekly

This sequel to The Taker continues the time-traveling tale of two immortals whose destinies are bound together by love, longing, misery, and fate ... Katsu’s beautiful, mesmerizing narrative will not lesson the effect of her very adult and often brutal dark fairy tale ... leaves readers anxiously awaiting Katsu’s final volume.

—— Library Journal

Adair’s complexity will be explored and expanded, Lanny’s adventures will thrill you, new characters will steal and break your heart (oh, Savva), old characters will boil your blood, and dark magic will snake up the bones of the story like the vines of a rogue bush. But my favourite part of this story, as always, is Alma Katsu’s haunting prose. I have never been so affected by the elegance and terror that fills her every word.

—— Chels & A Book

Alma Katsu has an incredible talent of storytelling. She put together a hauntingly beautiful tale of evil and romance. I can't stop thinking about this book. It is so wonderfully written and the story so captivating that I want to read it over and over again….The Reckoning is without a doubt one of the top books on my list of favorite reads of 2012. I don't know how the author did it but this second installment is even more breathtaking and mesmerizing.

—— melaniesrandomthoughts.com

The story’s secondary characters are as rich and vicious in personality as the main ones are and with engaging traits such as greed, pure evil, and traitorous. But the true hook in this story is the antagonist, Adair. Corrupt, evil, murderous, and as immortal as the heroine herself. Absolutely fascinating…Underlying themes explored in this novel of immortality are change, love, obsession, vengeance, power, life and death, and Alma Katsu weaves it all together in a fascinating paranormal yarn that grips you from start to finishThe drama is fascinating and thrilling. Definitely a unique, enduring story of the paranormal!

—— Historical Novel Review

This series amazes me. It is haunting, evil, lovely and very romantic all at the same time. I seriously cannot stop thinking about these books.

—— readingteen.com

What I liked about The Reckoning: Pretty much everything. Katsu’s writing falls nicely somewhere in between fancy literary writing and popular fiction.

—— marashapiro.com

5 out of 5 stars: I can’t wait to see how the series will end.

—— vampsweresandcassay.com

I was really grabbed by the narrative voice and I was fasincated by the story ... what a story!

—— Charlaine Harris, author of the True Blood series

Yan Lianke sees and describes his characters with great tenderness . . . this talented and sensitive writer exposes the absurdity of our time

—— La Croix

An unconventional blur of fact and fiction, How Should a Person Be? is an engaging cocktail of memoir, novel and self-help guide

—— Grazia

A candid collection of taped interviews and emails, random notes and daring exposition…fascinating

—— Sinead Gleeson , Irish Times

Provocative, funny and original

—— Hannah Rosefield , Literary Review

A serious work about authenticity, how to lead a moral life and accept one’s own ugliness

—— Richard Godwin , Evening Standard

An exuberantly productive mess, filtered and reorganised after the fact...rather than working within a familiar structure, Heti has gone out to look for things that interest her and "put a fence around" whatever she finds

—— Lidija Haas , Times Literary Supplement

A sharp, witty exploration of relationships, art and celebrity culture

—— Natasha Lehrer , Jewish Chronicle

[Sheila Heti] has an appealing restlessness, a curiosity about new forms, and an attractive freedom from pretentiousness or cant…How Should a Person Be? offers a vital and funny picture of the excitements and longueurs of trying to be a young creator in a free, late-capitalist Western City…This talented writer may well have identified a central dialectic of twenty-first-century postmodern being

—— James Wood, New Yorker

Funny…odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable…Sheila Heti does know something about how many of us, right now, experience the world, and she has gotten that knowledge down on paper, in a form unlike any other novel I can think of

—— New York Times

Playful, funny... absolutely true

—— The Paris Review

Sheila's clever, openhearted commentary will draw wry smiles from readers empathetic to modern life's trials and tribulations

—— Eve Commander , Big Issue in the North

Amusing and original

—— Mail on Sunday
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