Stephen Fry: What Jeeves and PG Wodehouse taught me about life: The actor fell in love with stories about ‘silly asses in spats and monocles’ as a teenager. Fifty years after the author’s death, he celebrates his comic genius (Stephen Fry, 5/18/25, Times uk)
It is true that, on the surface, the world of Wodehouse seems trapped in time — a time we might very well think has passed its sell-by date. His cast of imperious aunts, stern and gooseberry-eyed butlers, disapproving uncles, sporty young girls, natty young men who throw bread rolls in club dining rooms yet blush and stammer in the presence of the opposite sex — all may be taken as evidence of a man stuck in a permanent childhood, a view attested by George Orwell primus inter pares. (If that’s the right phrase, Jeeves? “Perfectly correct, sir. Although the common English equivalent ‘first among equals’ would perhaps serve as well.” Thank you, Jeeves.) As many have pointed out, Wodehouse never grew up, making his world and outlook, as Waugh put it, “Eden before the Fall”.
European culture never really recovered from WWI, while he simply ignored it.