Jennings and Darbishire

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Under the patronage of Miss Thorpe, Linbury is going green - collecting of rubbish, recycling, distribution of leaflets to raise awareness. The corridors reverberate to a crescendo of "voom-voom" noises, as rockets, piloted by "Butch Breakaway" Jennings, and his "bald-headed scientist" colleague, Darbishire, take off for the Moon as Lunatickians! Mr and Mrs Lumley – She runs the local cafe and is renowned for her excellent cakes and doughnuts, while her husband is less renowned as a repairer of bicycles. By contrast, although we know that Malory Towers is in Cornwall, the location of St Clare’s isn’t even mentioned and nor, extraordinarily given when they were written and set, is the fact that there is a world war going on!

I can’t be completely sure without re-reading all the books again if they ever use first names amongst themselves when out of the girls’ hearing.G. Wodehouse had written books using children as characters instead of writing about Jeeves and Wooster. Most of the first names of characters have been revealed (John Christopher Timothy Jennings; Charles Edwin Jeremy Darbishire; Graham Venables; Robin Atkinson; Charles Temple, etc. and my favourite gigs My novels Names, naming and words National Novel Writing Month People Places Poems Pubs and and pints. Dr Basil Featherstonehaugh Hipkin – an absent-minded zoologist who meets Jennings and Darbishire when they accidentally push him into the river while they are on an illicit boating expedition.

There were 25 books, and I don;’t know how many radio broadcasts; they have been reissued and rebroadcast since I heard them as a child, and I hope they enliven and amuse children who read or listen to them now. The two friends are able, at length, to persuade the headmaster to rescind the ban on hut-building, and inadvertently show the daughter-in-law of a distinguished Old Boy, General Merridew, that the school is just the right place to send her young son. Of course, I didn’t share this with friends – at my (highly academic) school we were also supposed to be young ladies preparing to become teachers (or if not so bright, secretaries) with neat handwriting – I always felt that Jennings didn’t fit.Don't get me wrong, I still think that the Jennings books make fantastic reading, but this certainly wasn't the best in the series. Alarmed at the thought of his most private thoughts being made public, Jennings decides to invent a secret language. Everything ghastly is ozard; being a new chap’s pretty ozard for a bit, but you’ll get used to it when you’ve been here as long as I have. Uniquely in the series, Jennings, as Usual contains no action away from the school premises, nor has any reference to any person or place other than school staff, pupils or locations.

A significant amount of the humour in the book comes from Jennings’ tendency to take things literally, and this continues throughout the series. Actually, although all the series are told in the third person, there’s an intangible feeling that Jennings is being narrated by an adult – Buckeridge originally told them as stories to his pupils – which isn’t present in the Blyton stories. Jennings was born in Walworth, London, the son of John Jennings, a tailor, and his wife Sarah Michel. Jennings plans to report on a mathematical comparison of TV aerials in rural (Linbury) and urban (Dunhambury) locations - but gets distracted with the care of Old Sleepy, the top secret hedgehog.Jennings couldn’t keep up with the times, and Collins, the original publishers, dropped the series in the late seventies.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. A minor one is that all the series appeared in many editions, but the early ones in particular have some fantastic and atmospheric illustrations. Unsurprisingly, Jennings (John Christopher Timothy) is the central character throughout the series, more so than any one character in the Blyton series, even Darrell Rivers in Malory Towers.A scholarship from the Bank Clerks' Orphanage fund permitted his mother to send him to Seaford College boarding school in Sussex. At Linbury Court, it's certainly a case of remember, remember the fifth of November when Jennings copyrights his famous plan for members of Form 3 to act as Public Relations Officer to G Fawkes Esq (deceased) to raise funds for Famine Relief, undergoing an emergency haircut, an accidental mis-use of Old Wilkie's sports coat, and a day out in Dunhambury with a honky tonk piano in tow. Towards the end of Buckeridge’s life there was a revival, but it’s difficult to feel happy about the unattractive latterday paperbacks with their ugly covers, bland illustrations, and, worst of all, crudely “modernised” texts.