Tales from the Drones Club

The Drones Club

by P.G. Wodehouse

The Eggs, Beans, & Crumpets of the Drones Club are a rum lot, kindly, & not much given to answering lots of questions. But now these strong, silent types have decided to tell all. Discover what really happened during the Great Peke Crisis, what was the deep secret of the Beef Trust, & why Bramley is so bracing. You'll find the results as lively as a Boat Race Night Party. And who better to host the festivities than P.G. Wodehouse?

Genres: Humor, Fiction, Short Stories, Comedy, Historical Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Reviews

[Peter Tillman]

Pretty great, if a bit repetitive. Ok, definitely repetitive, to the point of being tiresome at times.. It's not Wodehouse's best -- but, y'know, it's not like he's writing more of this stuff ....

The cover art is worth the price of admission. As is the title. Hot stuff. I'll bet your library has a copy, and it doesn't hurt to check out the old stuff. I noticed a pencilled note on the date-due card pocket [!!]: "2018--keep." I did my part!

Recommended for serious Wodehouse fans. Others might want to try something else.

[Mela]

First of all, it was P.G. Wodehouse - his wit and language and I am a big fan of his still.

Yes, the idea for stories was repetitive (in those stories and others by the author). To have a bigger joy I was reading them between books (not one after the other). Although, when one thinks that one often tends to make the same mistakes - this repetitiveness seems justified.

But no matter that Freddie was again in love, and Bingo had problems with money - Wodehouse was a great comedian.

[Peter]

I have not finished reading this yet, but it fits the Wodehouse form, the pure, perfect Wodehouse form. This is the primo stuff, baby, the finest, 100-percent pure, uncut farce, ground into a fine white powder and cut into lines with the sharpest of razor blades. You do one or two stories at a time and the ridiculousness will Blow Your Mind, man. Do too many at once and you'll get sick and everything will be quite unpleasent, but otherwise these dynamite, brilliant, mad little things and you find yourself just sitting on the train and giggling like a madman while everyone stares at you because they just don't get it, and even if you told them it was about British gentlemen doing inane things they still wouldn't really be clear.

[William Leight]

A collection of stories featuring Bertie Wooster's largely interchangeable hare-brained friends. Since they aren't Jeeves and Wooster stories, they lack Bertie's pitch-perfect narration and the Jeeves-Wooster dynamic. And they don't reach the same level of antic absurdity as the Mulliner stories and their extremely unreliable narrator. However, that doesn't mean that they should be reserved for Wodehouse fanatics like me. Wodehouse always flourishes in the short form because it frees him from the limitations of the romantic comedy genre and allows him to concentrate on comedic situations and hilarious dialogue. If the protagonist of one of the stories in this volume is in love, you can be fairly confident that he will fail to get the girl in the funniest way possible. To coin a phrase (and overgeneralize), all successful Wodehouse romances are the same, but each failed Wodehouse romance fails in its own way: these stories allow Wodehouse to exercise his fertile imagination to excellent effect. Probably not the best place for someone new to Wodehouse to start, but far from the worst either.

[Emily]

I don't think my copy is the full selection of short stories in Tales from the Drones Club but I'm counting it as a book anyway.

The Drones Club aren't Wodehouse's best stories - Jeeves & Wooster are hard to top - so some of these were only marginally amusing. Although I seem to think the ones that other reviewers come down hard on are the funnier ones of the lot. Like the hat story. I figured it out almost at once, and the fact that the nurse is the only other person in the story to understand just makes it funnier.

[Mark]

It's PG Wodehouse, what isn't to love......

On reviewing this, these short stories are great fun. Many have previously discussed Wodehouse's use of language.

No one is seriously harmed, embarrassed, momentarily heartbroken and possibly concerned should they find themselves in the soup. But nothing more harmful.

My only wish is that I had found Wodehouse sooner.

A great place to dive in, and swim in the ocean of Wodehouse that is available.

Highly recommended!!

[David Lessard]

Brilliant phrases, many alluding to classic works, and hilarious situations as always. A majority of the stories center on Bingo, instead of spreading the tales more amongst the quirky characters, and the formula used means this text works best when the stories are savored over a long period of time, rather than a straight read through.

[DC]

The short story format really shows the formula of Wodehouse's writing, but by golly... it's a pretty effective formula, what?
Dash it, but I did enjoy and laugh at these stories - it was just what the doctor ordered.

[Kaye]

The members of the Drones Club can certainly get themselves into some ridiculous situations! The incidents made me smile and shake my head in disbelief.

[Martha Greenough]

Read first couple - enjoyable, but stopped there.

[Scott Campbell]

To be honest, I didn't finish it. The stories were all fairly repetitive. People who are actually fans of Wodehouse might want to give it a star higher.

[Magali Moreno]

PG Wodehouse is perfect

[Meg]

Amusing distraction for my British bones, I couldn’t get through the wrestling short story though

[James Varney]

"The Masked Troubadour," "Nobless Oblige," "Sonny Boy" and "All's Well With Bingo" are probably the sublime highlights here, although some moments in "Trouble Down at Tudsleigh" and a handful of others that are Wodehouse highlights. The wonder of it all is how broke all these will-be rich young men who went to Eton and Oxford always are - I mean, they frequently lack a fiver. But of course that - the constant search for cash - and a girl's heart are the wellsprings of all these wonderful stories.

Like all Wodehouse, highly recommended.

[Kurinji Sathasivam]

Excellent collection of short stories, mainly featuring Bingo Little.

[The Librarian's Granddaughter]

One of my most vivid memories as a child is my mother sitting on the couch reading a book. I was very curious about what she was reading so much that he burst out laughing like that. P G Woodhouse was and still is Mom's favorite author. It is a pleasure for her to read and reread his works. I hadn't read anything by him until now. Mom never forced it on me, she even warned me that not everyone likes humor. A large collection of short stories came to me, but I read only the first part - Tales from the Drones club and decided to take a little break. As far as I know, Mom's favorite stories are Jeeves and Wooster.

Ah, now, essentially. The stories were interesting. As always there was no way I could like every single one of them. I liked some more than others. Either way, the collection managed to ignite my interest in Wodehouse's work. His writing style is light and enjoyable to read and his sense of humor is great. I must point that if you're not into British humor, you probably won't like it. I liked that in the stories we meet the same faces and start building their images and so on until at some point we know what to expect from them. The story with the dogs was the funniest.

[Libbeth]

I will use this "review" for all the P. G. Wodehouse I have read. I read them all so long ago and enjoyed them so much that I have given them all 5 stars. As I re-read them I will adjust the stars accordingly, if necessary, and add a proper review.
When I first discovered P. G. Wodehouse I devoured every book I could find in the local library, throughout the eighties and early nineties. Alas, this means that I have read most of them and stumbling across one I have not read is a rare thing. I'm sure that through this great site I will joyfully find at least a few I have not read, and be able to track them down.
My records only began in 1982, so I do not have a note of any I read before then. I’m sure I will enjoy re-reading them.

[Martyn]

An explanation of the 3 star rating - I love Wodehouse and believe him to be the funniest writer to have ever written anything in the English language but I think this collection suffers from having too many stories with the same plot side by side, some of them exactly the same plot! Any of the stories individually would be fantastic, but together they are too easy to compare.

This is not fair on Wodehouse of course as this is a posthumous collection that pulls stories together that would have been separated by years in publication date and I'm sure he didn't intend to have so many similar plots read concurrently. It's also unfair because, to paraphrase Stephen Fry, you don't analyze such sunlit perfection.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

*Fate (aka Compromised!)--
*Tried in the furnace --
*Trouble down at Tudsleigh --
*The amazing hat mystery --
Goodbye to all cats --4
The luck of the Stiffhams --
*Noblesse oblige --
*Uncle Fred flits by --
*The masked troubadour --
*All's well with Bingo --
*Bingo and the Peke crisis --
*The editor regrets --
*Sonny boy --
The shadow passes --
*Bramley is so bracing --
The fat of the land --
The word in season (aka Bingo Little's wild night out)--
Leave it to Algy --
Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust --
Bingo bans the bomb --
Stylish stouts --
***
Romance at Droitgate Spa

[Patricia]

P.G. Wodehouse wrote like a fiend, and his particular specialty was soft, intelligent, wry humour. Whenever I read Wodehouse's work, I find myself smiling and smiling -- always makes me feel good. Gentle stories in a language that is beautifully wrought.

[Kirk]

Wodehouse's humor (humour for Brits) is always a pleasure to read. It's hard for me to rate collections as 5-star, since some of the stories are better than others, but this book makes a great nightstand volume.

[Phillip]

For years I only read the Jeeves and Wooster stories. I was aware of characters like Bingo Little only as peripheral to J and W tales. Collections of stories allow these characters to stand on their own and they are every bit as good as J and W. Wodehouse's world is expanded by these tales.

[Ikumi Crocoll]

I had not seen this before, since I believe that it only came out in the UK. Considering I tend to prefer Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster books, this was a real delight! Fast and fun, this is a great way to enjoy not only the author's humor but his great way of playing with words.

[Henry]

Though no Berty and Jeeves, jolly good fun if you enjoy Wodehouse.

[Celeste Yeiter]

LOVE pg wodehouse. he always makes me laught out loud.

[KayDee]

If you enjoy the original P.G. Wodehouse stories, you will love this book. The author captures the tone, dialogue and characters from the original series perfectly.

[Rocky Curtiss]

What fun from the lips of beans, crumpets, eggs, and pieface. Pure fun.

[Ronald]

read SOMETIME in 1998