Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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P.G. Wodehouse

A Blandings novel 
 
When the moon is full at Blandings, strange things happen: among them the commissioning of a portrait of The Empress, twice in succession winner in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. What better choice of artist, in Lord Emsworth's opinion, than Landseer. The renowned painter of The Stag at Bay may have been dead for decades, but that doesn't prevent Galahad Threepwood from introducing him to the castle - or rather introducing Bill Lister, Gally's godson, so desperately in love with Prudence that he's determined to enter Blandings in yet another imposture. Add a gaggle of fearsome aunts, uncles and millionaires, mix in Freddie Threepwood, Beach the Butler and the gardener McAllister, and the moon is full indeed.

Full Moon

(Blandings Castle)

'I like that young man. He is sound on pigs. He has his head screwed on the right way.' 
 
The Empress of Blandings, prize-winning pig and all-consuming passion of Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has disappeared. 
 
Blandings Castle is in uproar and there are suspects a-plenty - from the scandalous memoirist Galahad Threepwood to the Efficient Baxter, and the chilling former secretary to Lord Emsworth. Even Beach the Butler seems deeply embroiled. And what of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Clarence's arch-rival and neighbour, whose own pig competes with the Empress for local glory? 
 
With the castle full or imposters and deception around every corner, how will the Earl ever get to the bottom of the disappearance of the castle's most precious occupant? 
 
'Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny' Adele Parks 
 
'Line for line, no other author brings me as much pleasure' Joe Dunthorne

Summer Lightning

A Blandings novel 
 
Can the Empress of Blandings win the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Show for the third year running? Galahad Threepwood, Beach the butler and others have put their shirt on this, and for Lord Emsworth it will be paradise on earth. But a substantial obstacle lurks in the way: Queen of Matchingham, the new sow of Sir Gregory Parsloe Bart. Galahad knows this pretender to the crown must be pignapped. But can the Empress in turn avoid a similar fate? 
 
In this classic Blandings novel, pigs rise above their bulk to vanish and reappear in the most unlikely places, while young lovers are crossed and recrossed in every room in Blandings Castle.

Pigs Have Wings

'P. G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century' Sebastian Faulks 
 
'Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny' Arabella Weir 
 
Welcome to Blandings Castle - where there's always something going on and a rollicking good time to be had. In this collection of assorted stories, dive into the wonderful world of Wodehouse where a comedy of errors awaits at every turn. Meet the regulars at Blandings: the engagingly dotty Lord Emsworth, his terrifying sister Lady Constance and his secretary the Efficient Baxter, whose attempts to bring order to the castle always end in disarray. And revel in the hijinks galore that come with the addition of lovestruck young men, headstrong young women, iron-willed aunts and imposters roaming the grounds - not to mention the Empress of Blandings, Lord Emsworth's prized pig.

The World of Blandings

A Blandings novel 
 
As a peer of the realm, Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has an occasional duty to leave the Empress of Blandings, surely the most considerable pig in the whole world, and travel to London for the opening of parliament. It comes hard to him, for he has a proper sense of the priorities in life, which rate pigs and flowerbeds higher than politicians. 
 
But no sooner has he returned to Blandings than his real problems begin: the dastardly Duke of Dunstable is out to steal the Empress. His sister Lady Constance has inflicted on him a particularly nasty new secretary. And the Church Lads' Brigade are camped all over his lawns. 
 
Thank God for the Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred, whose own particularly devious brand of sweetness and light aims to banish blackmailers and pig-stealers and restore true love all over the castle grounds.

Service with a Smile

Dive into this collection of laugh-out-loud funny short stories from the perennial comic P. G. Wodehouse. 
 
Meet Clarence, the absent-minded ninth Earl of Emsworth, whose beloved pig the Empress of Blandings is in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. Revel in the delicious feud between Head Gardener McAllister and the terrifying Lady Constance, which can only be solved by a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. And skipping an ocean and a continent, indulge in unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood, specially selected by Wodehouse himself. 
 
'P. G. Wodehouse is the funniest person that has ever written words' Greg James 
'An incomparable and timeless genius' Kate Mosse

Blandings Castle and Elsewhere

A Blandings novel 
 
Unwelcome guests are descending on Blandings Castle - particularly the overbearing Duke of Dunstable, who settles in the Garden Suite with no intention of leaving, and Lady Constance, Lord Emsworth's sister and a lady of firm disposition, who arrives unexpectedly from New York. Skulduggery is also afoot involving the sale of a modern nude painting (mistaken by Lord Emsworth for a pig). It's enough to take the noble earl on the short journey to the end of his wits. 
 
Luckily Clarence's brother Galahad Threepwood, cheery survivor of the raffish Pelican Club, is on hand to set things right, restore sundered lovers and even solve all the mysteries.

A Pelican at Blandings

A Blandings novel 
 
Uncle Fred is one of the hottest earls who ever donned a coronet. Or as he crisply puts it, 'There are no limits, literally none, to what I can achieve in the springtime.' 
 
Even so, his gifts are stretched to the limit when he is urged by Lord Emsworth to save his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, from the enforced slimming cure of the haughty Duke of Dunstable. Pongo Twistleton knows his debonair but wild uncle shouldn't really be allowed at large - especially when disguised as a brain surgeon. He fears the worst. And in yet another brilliant novel by the master of English comedy, Pongo will soon find his fears are amply justified.

Uncle Fred in the Springtime

'Without at least one impostor on the premises, Blandings Castle is never itself' 
 
Welcome to the world of the delightfully dotty Lord Emsworth, his bone-headed younger son and his long-suffering secretary. 
 
Having returned home with a valuable Egyptian amulet, Lord Emsworth finds his home contains not one but two imposters intent on taking it off his hands. But with no real sense of how the amulet came to be in his pocket in the first place, things get a lot more complicated very quickly...

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