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  • Published: 15 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9781841591902
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

The Swoop! & The Military Invasion of America



An amusing jeu d'esprit of the young Wodehouse, which satirizes the popular 'Invasion literature' of the era while poking gentle fun at English (and Foreign) manners and generally revelling in absurdity

"Deep down in his heart the genuine Englishman has a rugged distaste for seeing his country invaded by a foreign army. People were asking themselves by what right these aliens had overrun British soil. An ever-growing feeling of annoyance had begun to lay hold of the nation."

Clarence Chugwater is not a Boy Scout for nothing. It is summer 1909 and everyone is too interested in the Test Match to notice that England has been invaded by the Germans. And the Russians. And the Chinese. Not to mention a 'boisterous band of the Young Turks', a mad Mullah, and a brace of North African pirates. The government has recently abolished the army so there is nothing to be done about it anyway, except give a masterly display of polite indifference. But this would be to reckon without patriotic Clarence, 'Boy of Destiny', who alone is prepared to stand up to the foe, and who devises a highly unorthodox plan to restore his country to freedom.

The Swoop! Or, How Clarence Saved England reprints the 33 black and white drawings by C. Harrison that accompanied the first edition. It is supplemented by The Military Invasion of America, in which Clarence's story is humorously transplanted across the Atlantic.

  • Published: 15 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9781841591902
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:

About the author

P.G. Wodehouse

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (always known as ‘Plum’) wrote about seventy novels and some three hundred short stories over seventy-three years. He is widely recognised as the greatest 20th-century writer of humour in the English language.

Perhaps best known for the escapades of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Wodehouse also created the world of Blandings Castle, home to Lord Emsworth and his cherished pig, the Empress of Blandings. His stories include gems concerning the irrepressible and disreputable Ukridge; Psmith, the elegant socialist; the ever-so-slightly-unscrupulous Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred; and those related by Mr Mulliner, the charming raconteur of The Angler’s Rest, and the Oldest Member at the Golf Club.

In 1936 he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for ‘having made an outstanding and lasting contribution to the happiness of the world’. He was made a Doctor of Letters by Oxford University in 1939 and in 1975, aged ninety-three, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died shortly afterwards, on St Valentine’s Day.

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Praise for The Swoop! & The Military Invasion of America

The Everyman edition promises to be a splendid celebration of the divine Plum

The Independent