Her novels evoked beautifully the atmosphere of the country gardens (The Bell, 1958) or the mysterious London streets (The Time of the Angels, 1968) in which they were set, with their characters engaged in intriguing love relationships, from the totally innocent to the wholly weird.

Iris Murdoch really knows how to write, can tell a story, delineate a character, catch an atmosphere with deadly accuracy

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

A distinguished novelist of a rare kind

A tragi-comic masterpiece... A magnificent novel

To people of a certain age, Adrian Mole was their Harry Potter. Loveable in its celebration of mediocrity, it's told with Townsend's trademark deadpan humour

The diaries are a satire of our times...very funny indeed

The funniest person in the world

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius