Blandings Castle Series

I've been reading the Blandings novels in order and have found them most enjoyable. I'm up to Full Moon and have read about one third but just can't seem to get into it.... I'm considering skipping it and heading straight to Pigs Have Wings.

I managed to finish it. Not overly funny. In the end an average, 3-star read.

I have Pigs Have Wings in my 2010 Challenge, so I have high hopes for that one.

I was watching an old episode of a TV quiz show last night (something I recorded unintentionally: the serendipity of the hard disk recorder). In one of the questions, the host read out "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which" and asked which novel ended with those lines.

The possible answers that came up on the screen were Animal Farm, Blanding's Castle (sic.), and The Tale of Pigling Bland .

Obviously the compiler must have remembered the Blandings Castle stories as a famous example of pig-fiction. But how they could put something like that out on national television in the UK without realising on how many levels their wrong answer was wrong...?

I've never read any of these, but I have an unabridged audiobook of a pelican at blandings read by the inimitable Martin Jarvis, and though not a brilliant book, Lord Elmsworth, Lady Constance and Galahad Threepwood are certainly creations worthy of Mr.Wodehouse at his best.

And Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, as well...