When smart met casual

YOU’VE got to impress these pig-breeding blighters. Give ’em the morning coat, the sponge-bag trousers, the stiff collar and the old top hat, and you have them saying to themselves “Golly, these Earls are hot stuff!” Whereas, seeing you dressed as you are now, they would give you the bird and probably start a revolution. You must cow them, Clarence, overawe them, make them say “The half was not told me,” like the Queen of Sheba when she met King Solomon. This cannot be done in a 10-year-old shooting coat with holes in the elbows.’

P. G. Wodehouse’s amiably absentminded Lord Emsworth has accepted an invitation to address the Shropshire, Herefordshire and South Wales Pig-Breeders’ Association on his favourite topic, the Empress of Blandings, and then realises with horror that, at the height of summer, he might have to wear a top hat and stiff collar. ‘Well, really,