There’s some good (and also some inexplicable to me) books here already so I won’t mention any of them.

I’ll choose P. G. Wodehouse. Although he’s more famous for Jeeves and Wooster I much prefer his Blandings stories. Such sublime, perfection.

His writing seems so effortlessly easy but others who have attempted to emulate it have all fallen ugly, leaden, clumsy and short of his comic genius.