When someone breaks into the cricket pavilion and steals two silver cups, the whole school is agog.

Could it possibly be an inside job? Nothing less than the honour of St Austin's is at stake, not to mention the reputation of Jim Thomson, an excellent athlete with a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In this charming novel of school life, the first book he published, Wodehouse demonstrates right away a talent for storytelling and characterisation, not to mention a sharp ear for the inflections of schoolboy speech, still recognisable after more than a century.

But what marks the story out from others of the same sort are the many humorous touches which hint at a master of comedy in the making.