Anthony Buckeridge R.I.P.
(posted by Mike)
obituary · interview · random excerpts: 1-2-3-4-5
As a boy, Buckeridge's Jennings & Darbyshire books were my absolute top-of-the-pile favourites. Better than Enid Blyton (with the possible exception of The Faraway Tree) - better than the C.S. Lewis Narnia books - better even than Norman Hunter's hilarious Professor Branestawm series.
Hysterically funny is an over-used term, but for once, the Jennings books were just that. Heavingly, tearfully, painfully, "if I read so much as one more sentence I might just have a Little Accident" funny.
And there were dozens of them to chomp my way through, stretched out on the shelves of the Doncaster junior library in Waterdale. Jennings & Darbyshire must have been big in Doncaster back then. Indeed, two of my classmates at prep school were snapped up by Radio 4 (our elocution mistress had Connections), performing the characters in a weekly dramatised adaptation.
(One of them has since gone on to do quite well for himself. He was quite the sensitive Am Dram Luvvie back then, you know.)
- I... I... I... Corwumph!
- Fossilised fishhooks!
- You addle-pated clodpoll!
Ee, it's a Vanishing World.
Young 'uns today. They wouldn't understand, would they?
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