24-year-old Bertie Wooster returns to London from Easeby, his Uncle Willoughby's home, after firing his valet for stealing.

For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right.

The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.

At Easeby, Florence tells Bertie that his uncle is writing a memoir called "Recollections of a Long Life".

Bertie rushes back to his room to move the parcel but finds he has misplaced the key to the locked drawer.

Characters in Wodehouse's stories rarely tell conventional jokes, and humour is instead created indirectly through a number of stylistic devices.

Bertie Wooster seldom tells a traditional joke, for example, but often uses puns, such as when he describes how his valet Meadowes stole his socks: "I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten", and, "directly I found that he was a sock-sneaker I gave him the boot".

For instance, pairs of synonymous words are often used in Bertie's narration and dialogue, as in the following quote from this story: "This infernal kid must somehow be turned out eftsoons or right speedily".

A brand new production of Jeeves Takes Charge with Sam Harrison, also directed by Wooldridge, opens at the Theatre Royal Bath, in December 2024.