The Code of the Woosters: PG Wodehouse's guide to fighting fascism



Forget about the author’s wartime mistakes, the way Bertie tackles Mosley-esque thug Roderick Spode is a great lesson in sending up would-be despots
‘Far from gruntled’ … John Turner as Roderick Spode and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster in ITV’s Jeeves and Wooster. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock


There are many reasons to love The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse. It’s a novel by one of the finest exponents of the English language at the very top of his game. It’s one of Bertie Wooster’s funniest, silliest and most perfectly rendered adventures. It’s a book where perfect quotes fly off the page as frequently as the incomparable Aunt Dahlia smashes up mantelpiece ornaments. In fact, before I hit you with the serious political material, let’s just enjoy a few:

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

“It’s an extraordinary thing – every time I see you, you appear to be recovering from some debauch. Don’t you ever stop drinking? How about when you are asleep?”

“She laughed – a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.”

The book would be worth treasuring for such writing alone. But here in 2016, it seems more vital than ever. Or at least more vital than it has done since round about 1945. Because this is the book in which Bertie Wooster teaches us one of the best and most effective ways of beating fascists: you stand up to them and you point out exactly how ridiculous they are.

The crucial scene comes just over halfway through, after Bertie and his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle have endured 100 or so pages of intolerable bullying from the would-be fascist dictator Roderick Spode.

Spode is a man whom Wooster describes as appearing “as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment”.

Spode, who is clearly based on Oswald Mosley, is the leader of a militaristic fascist group called the Blackshorts (shorts because all the shirt colours had already been taken) and is inordinately fond of throwing his considerable weight around:


“Here he laid a hand on my shoulder, and I can’t remember when I have experienced anything more unpleasant. Apart from what Jeeves would have called the symbolism of the action, he had a grip like the bite of a horse.”

Such menacing is brought to an end thanks to a typically clever intervention from Jeeves and in one of the most satisfying speeches in the western canon, when Bertie declares:

“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?’”

Confronted with evil, Wodehouse made a ghastly error

And isn’t it beautiful to see fascists being treated with exactly the contempt they deserve? This isn’t the time or the place to go into the tragedy of Wodehouse’s war record, but let’s at least grant that he showed a good way forward against home-grown fascists and Hitler alike: you send them up as the rotters they are.

One of the many tragedies of our times is that we have taken so many perfect perishers so seriously instead of laughing them off the stage. As well as a moral failure, the ascendency of cruel rightwing demagogues is a sense of humour failure. Our problem isn’t just post-truth, it’s post-irony. The pity is that people can’t see that Nigel Farage is a spivvy egg-burp despot manqué. That Putin is so clearly overcompensating. That Donald Trump is Donald Trump. That the people calling themselves the alt-right are twerps. That these are all mirthless, absurd nincompoops.

Perhaps our bigger problem is that all laughter dries in the throat. That meanness and cruelty so often accompany an inability to understand comedy. That innocent people are being attacked on our streets and our politicians have been threatened and murdered. That perfect perishers are once again disfiguring the London scene.

But the Code of the Woosters has a message for us here, too. It’s fortifying and inspiring that Bertie stands up to Spode and so thoroughly trounces him. Just as important is the fact that Spode has so outraged Bertie’s fundamental sense of decency. He has crossed a line that has to be held.

Under normal circumstances, people like the stately-home hopping Bertie Wooster may not be the most natural political allies for most Guardianistas. But we should be proud to stand alongside them when it comes to the really important stuff. We could argue all day about the shades of grey, but when the question is as black and white as the fight against fascism, I would be mighty glad to link arms with someone with such a strong sense of fair play, such generous kindness, and so much warm feeling for his fellow humans. What unites us, after all, is far greater than what divides us.

The Code of the Woosters is published by Arrow,