Ghost of a flea: How To Be An Internee Without Previous Training

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December 05, 2005

How To Be An Internee Without Previous Training

P.G. Wodehouse has taken some stick for his wartime radio broadcasts due to their having been broadcast from rather the wrong side of the line, i.e. Berlin. I am not certain such criticism is entirely fair. This first attempt has an air of taking the mick about it sure to have flown below the radar of German humour.

Young men, starting out in life, have often asked me "How can I become an Internee?" Well, there are several methods. My own was to buy a villa in Le Touquet on the coast of France and stay there till the Germans came along. This is probably the best and simplest system. You buy the villa and the Germans do the rest.

One hesitates to judge the mood of the period. Things were going badly for England while Wodehouse rested up at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. That said, George Orwell was probably right to say "the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity". His own Bertie Wooster, indeed.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at December 5, 2005 09:35 AM

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