Editing P. G. Wodehouse (section)

===Honours and influence===

The proposed nominations of Wodehouse for a [[knighthood]] in 1967 and 1971 were blocked for fear that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime behaviour and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which the embassy was doing its best to eradicate".<ref name=block/> When Wodehouse was awarded the knighthood, only four years later, the journalist [[Dennis Barker]] wrote in ''The Guardian'' that the writer was "the solitary surviving English literary comic genius".<ref name="Guardian: Barker">"A funny thing happened on the way&nbsp;...: Dennis Barker on the official rehabilitation of P. G. Wodehouse", ''The Guardian'', 2 January 1975, p. 11</ref> After his death six weeks later, the journalist [[Michael Davie]], writing in the same paper, observed that "Many people regarded&nbsp;... [Wodehouse] as he regarded [[Beachcomber (pen name)|Beachcomber]], as 'one, if not more than one, of England's greatest men{{'"}},<ref>"Wodehouse—the man who wrote musical comedy without music", ''The Observer'', 16 February 1975, p. 3</ref> while in the view of the obituarist for ''The Times'' Wodehouse "was a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce".<ref>"P. G. Wodehouse", ''The Times'', 17 February 1975, p. 14</ref> In September 2019 Wodehouse was commemorated with a memorial stone in [[Westminster Abbey]];<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ft.com/content/3280beb6-db02-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210/https://www.ft.com/content/3280beb6-db02-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17 |archive-date=10 December 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=PG Wodehouse commemorated with Westminster Abbey plaque |website= Financial Times|date= 20 September 2019 |access-date=22 September 2019}}</ref> the dedication was held two days after it was installed.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/pg-wodehouse |title=Westminster Abbey Honours P G Wodehouse |website= Westminster Abbey |date= 20 September 2019 |access-date=22 September 2019}}</ref>

Since Wodehouse's death there have been numerous adaptations and dramatisations of his work on television and film;<ref name=dnb /><ref>Connolly, p. 117</ref> Wodehouse himself has been portrayed on radio and screen numerous times.{{refn|On screen he has been played by [[Peter Woodward]] in ''Wodehouse on Broadway'' (BBC, 1989);<ref>{{cite book|last=Taves|first=Brian|title=P. G. Wodehouse and Hollywood: Screenwriting, Satires and Adaptations|publisher=McFarland & Company|date=2006|location=London|isbn=978-0-7864-2288-3|page=8}}</ref> and [[Tim Pigott-Smith]] in ''Wodehouse in Exile'' (BBC, 2013).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rlwy8 |title=Wodehouse in Exile |website=BBC Four |publisher=BBC |access-date=1 August 2020}}</ref> On radio he has been played by [[Benjamin Whitrow]] (BBC, 1999);<ref>{{cite web|url=https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e3f01477fc6449ae9b91d2310bf40fca |website=BBC Genome: Radio Times |publisher=BBC |title=Afternoon Play: Plum's War |date=7 July 1999 |access-date=1 August 2020}}</ref> and twice by [[Tim McInnerny]] (BBC, 2008<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fz12l |website=BBC Radio 4 |title=Tony Staveacre – Wodehouse in Hollywood |access-date=1 August 2020}}</ref> and 2010).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wlf5m |website=BBC Radio 4 |title=How To Be An Internee With No Previous Experience |access-date=1 August 2020}}</ref>|group= n}} There are several literary societies dedicated to Wodehouse. The P. G. Wodehouse Society (UK) was founded in 1997 and has over 1,000 members as at 2015.<ref name=Murphy183>Murphy, pp. 183–185</ref> [[Alexander Armstrong]] became president of the society in 2017;<ref>[https://www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk/ "Our President"], P. G. Wodehouse Society. Retrieved 3 September 2024</ref> past presidents have included [[Terry Wogan]] and [[Richard Briers]].<ref>[https://www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk/president "What ho, Mr President!"], P. G. Wodehouse Society. Retrieved 3 September 2024</ref> There are also groups of Wodehouse fans in Australia, Belgium, France, Finland, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the US.<ref name=Murphy183/> As at 2015 the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' contains over 1,750 quotations from Wodehouse, illustrating terms from ''crispish'' to ''zippiness''.<ref>McCrum, Robert. [http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/shapers-of-english/pg-wodehouse-in-the-oed/ "P. G. Wodehouse in the OED"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150707204810/http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/shapers-of-english/pg-wodehouse-in-the-oed/ |date=7 July 2015 }}, Oxford University Press, retrieved 2 June 2015</ref> Voorhees, while acknowledging that Wodehouse's antecedents in literature range from [[Ben Jonson]] to [[Oscar Wilde]], writes:

{{Blockquote|[I]t is now abundantly clear that Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a kind of comic poetry.<ref>Voorhees (1985), pp. 341–342</ref>|}}