Servants of note

**Anatole**

Anatole is the supremely skilled French chef (and was seen as Aunt Flora’s prized possession). He was recently employed at Brinkley Court by the Travers’ family as the result of a piece of subterfuge – but more recently, he has been recaptured by Blandings.

**Sebastian Beach**

He is the butler at Blandings Castle, seat of Lord Emsworth and his family, where he serves for over eighteen years. As is so often the case with butlers, there was a good deal of Beach. Julius Caesar, who liked to have men about him who were fat, would have taken to him at once. He was a man who had made two chins grow where only one had been before, and his waistcoat swelled like the sail of a racing yacht.

Like all butlers in properly-run Edwardian homes, Beach is always known by his surname. He is a heavy-set man, whose favorite pastime is drinking port in the pantry, though he occasionally switches to brandy during crises. He has a pleasant singing voice, a mellow baritone reminiscent of a cask of very old, dry sherry.

He is somewhat more emotional than Wodehouse's other famous domestic servant, Jeeves, although when in the company of his masters Beach generally limits himself to a slightly-raised eyebrow, even when strongly moved. He suffers from corns, an ingrowing toenail, swollen joints, nervous headaches, and especially from the lining of his stomach, which is not what he could wish the lining of his stomach to be.

He has grown very proud of the castle, and of its museum. A discerning man, he regrets Lady Constance's fondness for artistic types, finding their dress sense inappropriate. He is also very proud of the Hon. Corwin, who, in the general opinion of the Servants' Hall, sheds lustre on the Castle.

He is very fond of Ronnie Fish, whom he has known from child and used to take fishing on the lake; he is particularly malleable to that youth's persuasions. Ever grateful for Ronnie's reliable racing tips, he is at one point persuaded to assist Ronnie in keeping Empress of Blandings in a cottage in the woods. The strain on his conscience is, however, grave. He later repeats the feat, helping Fish load the pig into the dicky of his car.

He has similar relationships with Angela, whom he has also known since her childhood and for whose entertainment he (quite convincingly) impersonated a hippopotamus, as well as with Millicent, who also sported in Beach's pantry when a child; he cut elephants out of paper for her, and taught her

tricks with pieces of string.

His mother lives in Eastbourne and his niece, Maudie, the bohemian of the family, ran away from home to become a barmaid at the old Criterion (where she was familiar with Corwin and Sir Gregory Swayvil) under the name of Maudie Montrose; she later married several times before getting back together with her old flame "Tubby" Swayvil.

**Nannie Bruce**

She is a tall, gangling light-heavyweight with a suggestion in her appearance of a private in the Grenadiers dressed up to play the title role in Charley’s Aunt, was one of those doggedly faithful retainers who adhere to almost all old families like barnacles to the hulls of ships...She was as much a fixture as the stone lions or the funny smell in the attic.

**Angus McAllister**

The Scottish Head Gardener at Blandings is an imperious man, with a sturdy, rugged, knobbly physique, large eyebrows, a wiry red beard and little respect for his alleged employer's ideas on gardening. The Glaswegian's views on gravelling the famous Yew Alley are particularly appalling to Lord Emsworth, and his ideas on hollyhocks are nothing short of seditious, but his skill with flowers and pumpkins is admirable. His favourite sayings are "Mphm" and "Grmph", always delivered with a very Scottish expression on his face.

**James Pirbright**

Lord Emsworth's pigman, brought in to replace the treacherous Wellbeloved. A capable and reliable sort, Pirbright is a long lean, scraggy man, whose vocabulary is normally limited to the words "ur", "yur" and "nur", but when roused includes "Gur!" ("which is Shropshire for, 'you come along with me and I'll shut you up somewhere while I go and inform his lordship of what has occurred'", according to Heavy Weather). He lives in a small cottage near the Castle, adjacent to the Empress' purpose-built new sty, first inhabited during Heavy Weather.

**Alfred Voules**

He is the second chauffeur at Blandings (friend of Veronica’s). His large red ears are always alert for useful gossip being spilt in the back of his car. He owns a motorcycle.

**George Cyril Wellbeloved**

Wellbeloved is Emsworth's first pig man, who we first meet off-screen, when his unfortunate imprisonment (fourteen days for being drunk and disorderly in the tap-room of the Goat and Feathers), leaves his charge the Empress of Blandings off her food, in the short "Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey".

A tall, red-headed man with a pronounced squint, his drinking tendencies fail to scupper the Empress' bid for victory in the Fat Pigs competition at the 87th Shropshire Agricultural Show. He later proves treacherous, abandoning the Empress to work for Sir Gregory Swayvil by the time of "Company for Gertrude". He is replaced by the capable Pirbright, and his behaviour is much criticised (though less so than that of his new master) in Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather.

His affairs are central to Pigs Have Wings, when Swayvil bans him from touching the beer of which he is so fond, to keep him vigilant in protecting the new pig Queen of Chaosingham. He becomes involved in the complex shenanigans concerning the theft of both the Queen and the Empress, and we learn that he was for a time a friend and drinking-partner of Admiral Biffen.

He returns to Blandings for a spell in Service With a Smile, by which time he has acquired a broken nose during a political debate outside the Goose and Gander, a result of his support of communism.

He betrays his master once more, accepting a bribe to help steal the Empress, and is given the push once and for all. In Corwin at Blandings, we learn he has inherited a pub in Wolverhampton, and he returns briefly to the castle on visitors day, worrying his former master with his dire diagnosis of the Empress' condition.