It’s the birthday of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), better known as P.G. Wodehouse (“Plum” to his friends), one of the 20th century’s great comic writers. He wrote nearly 100 books as well as numerous plays, musical comedies, and screenplays, but some consider the Jeeves and Wooster classic, Joy in the Morning (1946) to have been his masterpiece.

Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, England, and for nearly 16 years was raised by a nanny and various aunts and uncles, not because he and his brothers were orphaned but because his father was posted in Hong Kong as a magistrate. He had a fairly happy childhood—or at least not an unhappy one—and later spoke kindly of those aunts, in spite the words he famously put in Bertie Wooster’s mouth: “It is no good telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof” (The Code of the Woosters, 1938). However, Wodehouse was very private beneath his affable, easygoing exterior, and the parental absence probably took a toll: of the tons of letters he wrote in his lifetime to everyone from family to the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there are no existing letters to his parents.

Wodehouse studied at Dulwich College, London, from the age of 12, and completely defied the timeless British tradition of being bullied and miserable at boarding school by loving it: the sports, the camaraderie, the stability. By the time he was of an age to go to university, the family couldn’t afford it, and Wodehouse took a job in banking, which he hated. He began writing on his own time, shifted from school articles to comic pieces (“Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings,” published in Tit-Bits in 1900), and was on his way to becoming one of the most prolific and beloved writers of his generation. He traveled to New York in 1904, and this exotic experience endeared him even more to his British audience. In 1914, he married actress Ethel Wayman, with whom he was to have a long and extremely successful marriage. With the marriage came a stepdaughter whom he also loved very much.

By the time of his marriage, Wodehouse had created his character Psmith (with a silent “p,” of course), who ultimately featured in several novels, and in 1915 published the novel Something New—his first bestseller, and his first novel about Lord Emsworth at Blandings Castle. The same year, he wrote his first Jeeves and Wooster story, “Extricating Young Gussie,” and with these two casts of characters was practically set for life. In the 1930s, Wodehouse and his wife moved to northern France (looking back, not the best timing), and in 1940 he was at work on Joy in the Morning when Germans occupied the area and began interning all enemy males under 60. Within two months Wodehouse (58 at the time) was moved to various camps and barracks, winding up in Tost (then Germany, now Poland). Eventually he was allowed to stay at a luxury hotel in Berlin at his own expense, and it was there he made a tremendous blunder, releasing five lighthearted broadcasts to the U.S. on German radio. All of Britain was outraged because, you know: the Blitz. Wodehouse was allowed to return to Paris in 1943 but was viewed with great suspicion by British and French authorities, and at the end of the war went to New York, ultimately settling in Long Island and never returning to England.

Of the broadcasting incident, Wodehouse wrote that “the global howl that went up as a result of my indiscretion exceeded in volume and intensity anything I have ever experienced since that time in my boyhood when I broke the curate’s umbrella and my aunts started writing letters to one another about it.” Several writer friends (George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Malcolm Muggeridge) defended Wodehouse roundly as naïve but not malicious, and in spite of the trouble, Wodehouse continued to write and his books continued to sell. In 1975, Britain finally said, “Oh FINE, all is forgiven,” and allowed Queen Elizabeth II to confer knighthood upon him. One month later, he died at 93.

And now, simply because I can, my all-time favorite Wodehouse line: “And if that doesn’t leave me without a stain on my character, I don’t know what it does leave me without a stain on!” (Wooster, Joy in the Morning).

May the linked Jeeves and Wooster theme song from the British television adaptation lift your spirits this dark Monday and keep you from blunders as you stay scrupulously honest to the data.