Unfortunately...

...the butler profession has died out somehow during the last century. This is a pity, I think living in style would be much easier having a Jeeves at ones side. Fortunately, the loss of butlers can be covered by taking comfort in the wonderful and incredibly funny novels by

P.G. Wodehouse.

Basically they are- though never mundane- nothing but light comedies, funny but not silly, full of absurd but not ridiculous situations, not to sophisticated but with exactly the right amount of confusion and embarrasment before the eccentric but amiable characters arrive at their well-deserved happy ending. Wodehouse's work is an impressive proof of the typical british excellence of causing easy amusement without getting trivial. From this point of view- although not as popular and well known - his comedies stand in the tradition of Shakespeare, Trollope, Wilde and many others.

In case I could arouse curiosity among the readers of this blog- or more precisely: in case this blog does have readers at all- I can only sincerly recommend to start reading Wodehouse. I think it doesn't really matter where to start, but if it helps- start with "Stiff upper lip, Jeeves". Or with "Heavy Weather", which does not include Jeeves, but everything else a Wodehouse story needs. And recently, after visiting my favourite bookshop- which I can also just recommend!- I discovered that reading about Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves in english language only adds to the delight. But otherwise the Edition Epoca is publishing one of his novels every year as a very beautiful hardback edition. The mentioned examples of Wodehouse's art are translated under the titles "SOS, Jeeves" and "Sein und Schwein".