Anthony Buckeridge


Anthony Malcolm Buckeridge was an English author, best known for his Jennings and Rex Milligan series of children's books. He also wrote the 1953 children's book A Funny Thing Happened which was serialised more than once on Children's Hour.
He was awarded the OBE in 2003.

Personal life

Buckeridge was born in Hendon in Middlesex, the son of Ernest George Buckeridge and his wife, Gertrude Alice, but, following the death of his bank secretary father in World War I, he moved with his mother to Ross-on-Wye to live with his grandparents. Following the end of the war they returned to London where the young Buckeridge developed a taste for theatre and writing. A scholarship from the Bank Clerks' Orphanage fund permitted his mother to send him to Seaford College boarding school which, at the time, was located at Corsica Hall in Seaford, East Sussex. His experiences as a schoolboy there were instrumental in his later work.
Following the death of Buckeridge's maternal grandfather, the family moved to Welwyn Garden City where his mother worked in promoting the new suburban utopia to Londoners. In 1930 Buckeridge began work at his late father's bank but soon tired of it. Instead he took to acting including an uncredited part in Anthony Asquith's 1931 film Tell England.
After marrying his first wife, Sylvia Brown, he enrolled at University College London where he involved himself in Socialist and anti-war groups but did not take a degree after failing Latin. With a young family to support, Buckeridge found himself teaching in Suffolk and Northamptonshire which provided further experiences to inform his later work. During World War II Buckeridge was called up as a fireman and wrote several plays for the stage before returning to teaching at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate.
He used to tell his pupils stories about the fictional Jennings, a prep schoolboy boarding at Linbury Court Preparatory School, under headmaster Mr Pemberton-Oakes.
In 1962, he met his second wife, Eileen Selby. They settled near Lewes where Buckeridge continued to write and also appeared in small roles at Glyndebourne.
Buckeridge died on 28 June 2004 after a spell of ill health. He is survived by his second wife Eileen and three children, two from his first marriage.

Works

After World War II Buckeridge wrote a series of radio plays for the BBC's Children's Hour chronicling the exploits of Jennings and his rather more staid friend, Darbishire; the first, Jennings Learns the Ropes, was first broadcast on 16 October 1948. In 1950, the first of more than twenty novels, Jennings Goes to School, appeared. The tales make liberal use of Buckeridge's inventive schoolboy slang. These books, as well known as Frank Richards' Billy Bunter books in their day, were translated into a number of other languages. The stories of middle class English schoolboys were especially popular in Norway where several were filmed.
The Norwegian books and films were rewritten completely for a Norwegian setting with Norwegian names; Jennings is called "Stompa" in the Norwegian books.
More recently, the first four books were published in an omnibus edition by Prion, The Best of Jennings: Four Utterly Wizard Adventures All Jolly Well Complete and Unabridged. In 2011, six titles were produced as unabridged audio books

Reception

Buckeridge made no small contribution to postwar British humour, a fact acknowledged by such comedians as Stephen Fry. The deftly worded farce and delightful understatement of his narratives has been compared to the work of P. G. Wodehouse, Ben Hecht and Ben Travers.

Jennings novels

The "Jennings" series is a collection of humorous novels of children's literature. There are 24 in total. The first, Jennings Goes to School, appeared in 1950 and new titles were published regularly until the mid-1970s, with two more in the 1990s. In France the name of "Jennings" was changed to Bennett, in Germany to Freddy, while in Norway he is known as Stompa.
The novels usually followed a format of three major subplots per 16-chapter novel, the early books being derived from the popular BBC radio series on Children's Hour. All 62 of the original radio play scripts have been published in 10 volumes by David Schutte: Jennings Sounds the Alarm 1999; Jennings Breaks the Record 2000; Jennings Joins the Search Party 2001; Jennings to the Rescue 2002; Jennings and the Tricky Predicament 2003; Jennings and the Organised Outing 2004; Jennings and the Christmas Spirit 2004; Jennings and the Key to the Mystery 2004; and Jennings and the Unconsidered Trifles 2004.

Rex Milligan

Rex Milligan is a fictional character created by Anthony Buckeridge, and is the eponymous schoolboy hero of a series of five books set in the mid 20th century. The school that he attends is a grammar school named Sheldrake Grammar School in North London. The stories are presented in first person narrative, in contrast to the Jennings series. The final book is a compilation of 16 stories first published in the best-selling Eagle comic.

Characters

Buckeridge also wrote a serial, 'Liz', for the BBC Radio 4 children's omnibus programme '4th Dimension', broadcast in 6 parts in May and June 1974.