For an A-grade English comedian, P.G. Wodehouse turns out to have spent remarkably little time in his native land. There were childhood stints in late-Victorian Hong Kong, with his colonial magistrate father, successful raids on Great War-era Broadway (where he married an actress) and 1920s Hollywood, followed by tax exile in 1930s France.

Having found his way back to America in 1944, after a period of internment at the hands of the Nazis, the creator of Jeeves, Bertie Wooster and Lord Emsworth never set foot on British soil again.