He created the quintessentially English characters Jeeves, the "gentleman's gentleman", and Bertie Wooster. But one can only guess how P.G. Wodehouse would have responded this week to the disclosure that he was on the German payroll and would have been tried for treason had he returned to England after the second World War.
The latest twist in the life of P.G. Wodehouse has been uncovered in previously classified MI5 files released by the Public Record Office in London yesterday. The documents point to a more tangled web of intrigue than the writer once led his public to believe.
Wodehouse, who made five broadcasts for the Germans from Berlin in 1941, always claimed that they were simply a humorous account of his time in an internment camp after the German army occupied France. He and his American wife, Ethel, were living in Le Touquet in northern France, and Wodehouse insisted they were unable to flee the encroaching German forces because their car had broken down.
The broadcasts caused outrage in England, where Wodehouse was compared with the Irish-born William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw. Despite writing to the Foreign Office to explain his actions when he realised the anger his broadcasts had caused - he apologised to officials for his "inexcusable blunder" - the files revealed that the Germans had been paying Wodehouse about £3,500 a month in today's currency.
The MI5 files showed that the payments to Wodehouse were categorised as travelling expenses and "special payments" and that he appeared to have reached a "gentleman's agreement" with his captors in return for his release. While Wodehouse claimed he was released because Germany was sympathetic to his advancing age, the author had in fact agreed to broadcast German propaganda if he was given his liberty.
The files also show that, towards the end of the war, MI5 believed Wodehouse was simply the "silly ass" he claimed to be. However, after the war MI5 uncovered evidence that Wodehouse - once described by his family as "normal as rice pudding" - had been on the German payroll. The security service then revised its earlier assessment that his actions had not amounted to treason.
In December 1946, MI5 and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Theobald Mathew, reviewed his case. An MI5 officer wrote: "The director said that he now takes the view that, if Wodehouse ever comes to this country, he should be prosecuted."
In August 1944 Wodehouse went to the US, where he became an American citizen. Later, in a letter to the MI5 agent who interviewed him originally, Wodehouse said the remarks by Lord Justice Tucker in the trial of Lord Haw-Haw effectively had banned him from ever returning home.
He died at the age of 93 in 1975, 45 days after he was awarded a knighthood in Harold Wilson's New Year Honours list - the knighthood was never officially conferred on Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.