THE BROWSER

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing is in trouble yet again. This year's short-list includes some of the unfunniest books published in the last year: Terry Eagleton's The Gatekeeper ; Michael Frayn's Spies ; Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time ; bittersweet stand-up comedian Dave Gorman's Are You Dave Gorman? and Lissa Evans's Spencer's List . The not-very-smart money must now be riding with Will Ferguson's amusing Happiness.

More fun is to be had from a consideration of the life of the late Baron Wodehouse, whose sad death was reported last week. The 4th Earl of Kimberley had six wives, played championship tiddlywinks, bred prize pigs and was sacked from the Liberal benches in the Lords for urging people to vote Tory. He knew his first marriage was a mistake but couldn't stop it because, he said: 'The King and Queen were there - and I was in my best uniform.'

Publishing legend Peter Straus's move from an editorial to a literary agenting chair at Rogers, Coleridge & White follows a great tradition, pioneered by ex-editors Gillon Aitken, Giles Gordon, David Godwin and diet-book king Ed Victor, left. Straus is a timely replacement for Andrew 'the Jackal' Wylie whose merger with RC&W recently came unstuck.

'Where shall we begin?' asked Dan Jacobsen in his interview with the late Ian Hamilton for Between the Lines (£10.99) 'Why don't we go back to the Battle of Bannockburn,' replied the great critic, before returning to his traditional assault on Seamus Heaney. It takes a Celt.

books@observer.co.uk