The name “Jeeves” was derived from a Warwickshire cricketer, Percy Jeeves, who played two full years of country cricket in 1913 and 1914, before being killed in the Battle of the Somme during July 1916.

PG Wodehouse confirmed to the Warwickshire CCC that he had paid a visit to their match against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham in 1913, and that Jeeves’ bowling had impressed him sufficiently for him to recall it when he was starting to write the Jeeves/Wooster saga during a visit to New York in 1916. (In the one Jeeves novel in which Bertie Wooster does not appear, Ring for Jeeves, Jeeves admits to having dabbled a bit in the First World War, but evidently not with such terminal results).

Warwickshire CCC has a number of relevant exhibits in their museum at the ground in Edgbaston.

Tony Ring, Member of the Wodehouse Society

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