So wrote P. G. Wodehouse to Guy Bolton in 1952 as they planned a joint book of reminiscences of the theatrical world of the 1920s. “I think we shall have to let truth go to the wall if it interferes with entertainment. And we must sternly suppress any story that hasn’t a snapper at the finish. . . . Even if we have to invent every line of the thing, we must have entertainment.” Their book, Bring on the Girls: The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy, With Pictures to Prove It, is a sprightly account of the birth of the modern musical by two men at its center. Some of the stories are somewhat exaggerated, which is a great worry to Wodehouse’s biographers. The concern is more than a bit overblown, for Wodehouse and Bolton didn’t overstate their own place in the music-hall world or the importance of their work. They simply shined the anecdotes up so that people might stick around for the second act.

And that’s pretty much the story of Wodehouse’s whole life: Make ’em laugh. Nothing was too light or serious for him not to want it to be polished and presented better: “We saw the Coronation on television,” he wrote to Bolton in 1953. “I thought it needed work and should have been fixed up in New Haven. They ought to have cut at least half