BARONESS REINHILD von BODENHAUSEN

Here for the first time is the account of the life of P.G. Wodehouse, the world famous author and librettist known as Plummie, during his missing years as an internee in Germany 1941 & 1942. The story covers his release from a lunatic asylum to the panacea of the most peaceful country estate where he wrote and polished his book Joy In The Morning as well as making his ill advised, but wholly innocuous, broadcasts intended for his American friends and correspondents.

The most dramatic and delightful story of his change of fortune as a civilian prisoner of war is told a witnessed through the eyes and ears of young German aristocratic girl, Reinhild, and her mother, the beautiful widowed Baroness Anga von Bodenhausen, on their estate in the Harz Mountains, Degenershausen.

There is revealed an almost unbelievable charade because within this wartime country haven of the fervently anti-Nazi Baroness, are French Prisoners of War, the British Wodehouses, the Barones fiancée, Baron Raven von Barnikow, formally a dashing flying first war ace of the Richthofen Staffel but now also fervently anti-Nazi, Safon the cart horse (the main station transport), a variety of guests and Bwana (Reinhild’s dog) and his rival the Wodehouse Pekinese.

This book demonstrates the unfair nature of the public reaction and accusations to Uncle Plummie broadcast, and it is also an authoritative insight into his innocence, bringing with it a mélange of history, survival and death, combined with so many of the other misfortunes of war.