What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Childhood

"What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves?"

"Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake."

Children – or should we say "fiends in human shape" – tend to get a raw deal in the hilarious tales of P. G. "Plum" Wodehouse, coming out with things like "Daddee, are daisies little bits of the stars that have been chipped off by the angels?" or even "You've got a face like a fish!" When not turning the brains of normally sane, rational adults into soppy, sentimental lumps of blancmange, they are actually noisy, messy, cunning, and even venomous.

The ninth of Paul Kent's occasional essays on matters Wodehousean is a fascinating tour through Plum's alternative brand of tongue-in-cheek pedagogy, and a timely reminder that lurking somewhere in our adult selves is the child we all once were.