The World of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse | Vikram K Doraiswami, Shashi Tharoor, Paul Kent and Hal Cazalet in conversation with Shrabani Basu, accompanied by Simon Beck
The written word was an intoxicating plaything for P.G. Wodehouse. He continues to be hugely popular with an English readership in India that spans generations. How and why do his idyllic world and linguistic style cross notions of class and culture? In The World of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, diplomat and former journalist Vikram Doraiswami, politician and writer Shashi Tharoor, author Paul Kent and step great-grandson of P.G. Wodehouse, British opera tenor Hal Cazalet, discuss the enduring mystery of India’s fascination with Wodehouse. They are in conversation with journalist and historian Shrabani Basu.
Presented by Hawthornden Foundation
Vikram K. Doraiswami is an accomplished diplomat who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1992. Throughout his career, he has held various diplomatic postings, including Hong Kong, Beijing, New York, and South Africa. He was posted to the Embassy of India in Beijing in September 1996 where he served for nearly four years. He has served in significant roles such as Deputy Chief of Protocol (Ceremonials), Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, and Ambassador of India to Uzbekistan and the Republic of Korea. He served as the High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh from October 2020-September 2022 and assumed charge as the High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom on 23 September 2022. His diverse interests include reading, sports, fitness, travel, history, and jazz. He is fluent in Chinese, French, and has some knowledge of Korean.
Shashi Tharoor, a third-term Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, is the bestselling author of twenty-four books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development and for External Affairs in the Government of India. He has won numerous awards, including the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Crossword Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019, Tharoor was also awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in the category of ‘English Non-Fiction’ for his book An Era of Darkness. He chairs Parliament’s Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilisers and has previously chaired the Standing Committee on External Affairs and the Committee on Information Technology.
Paul Kent first discovered P.G. Wodehouse at the age of 12 when his English teacher made him choose between reading The Inimitable Jeeves or being put in detention. 50 years on, he is writing a 5-volume appreciation of Wodehouse’s work, of which 3 have appeared thus far.
Acclaimed British tenor opera singer Hal Cazalet, who has performed at nearly all operatic venues in the world, including the Kennedy Center & Carnegie Hall, trained at the Juilliard School, New York, where he won the Shoshana Foundation Award. Hal has been part of Philip Glass Les Enfants Terribles (USA, European Tours), Roxanna Panufnik The Music Programme (Polish National Opera, Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House) and Death and the Powers (Chicago Opera Theatre & Dallas, Boston and Monte Carlo Operas).
Shrabani Basu is a journalist and Sunday Times best-selling author. Her books include The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer, Spy Princess, Victoria & Abdul (now a major Oscar-nominated motion picture starring Dame Judi Dench and Ali Fazal), For King and Another Country and Curry.