Nazi past returns to haunt P.G. Wodehouse

LONDON, AUG. 6. A new play that describes P.G. Wodehouse as ``scum'' for collaborating with the Nazis during the war has incensed members of the Wodehouse Society who say it is an unfair slur on one of Britain's best-loved literary heroes.

``Beyond a Joke'' which is being performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, southern England, at the end of this month is based on files released by MI5 last year which revealed that Wodehouse was almost prosecuted for treason by the British at the end of the Second World War.

It focuses on radio broadcasts he made in 1941 that made light of the Nazi regime and appeared to describe German soldiers in friendly tones.

Wodehouse had been living in Le Touquet in Northern France when the Germans captured the town and took him to an internment camp as a prisoner of war. The Germans released him soon after with the proviso that he made some light-hearted broadcasts to the Americans stating that he had not suffered under the Nazi regime.

Although Wodehouse said at the time that he agreed to this plan in order to re-assure droves of American fans who had written to him about their concern over his well-being, tapes of the broadcasts were then sent by Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry to the BBC to be released to a U.K. audience.

They never were broadcast in Britain, but the very existence of Wodehouse's recordings, and the fact that he was paid - albeit only œ20 - for making them, caused a furore in the British press and accusations that the writer was a traitor and Nazi sympathiser.

Wodehouse, his formidable wife Ethel (played by Angela Thorne), and their Pekinese dog Wonder caused further irritation by moving from Le Touquet to live in the Hotel Bristol in Paris, enjoying cocktails and eclairs, oblivious to the privations of war elsewhere.

The play, written by Roger Milner, is set in 1944 at the start of the British Government's investigation into Wodehouse's relationship with the Nazis. Malcolm Muggeridge, who was then a British Intelligence Corps major and Major Cussen from MI5 were both sent to Paris to cross-examine Wodehouse and concluded that he was naive but not a traitor.

Duff Cooper, then British Ambassador to Paris took a less indulgent view, however, and it is the passages of the play recounting the conversation between Michael Cochrane, playing the part of Duff Cooper, and Anton Rodgers, playing Wodehouse, that are likely to perturb the writer's fans the most.

``The fact is Wodehouse that you lived quite happily in Le Touquet with the Germans,'' shouts Cooper to Wodehouse at one stage. ``You didn't hear the cries of the men at Dunkirk a mile or two away - the dive bombers... no, you wanted to save your own skin...''

- @ Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2000.

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