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Nigel Molesworth is a fictional character, the supposed author of a series of books about life in an English prep school named St Custard's. The books were written by Geoffrey Willans, with cartoon illustrations by Ronald Searle.
The Molesworth books were the result of an approach by Willans to the cartoonist, Searle, to illustrate a series of books based on a column he had been writing for Punch . They appeared in instalments in the children's magazine The Young Elizabethan , described by Molesworth as "the super smashing New Young Elizabethan ahem (advert.)". Searle had grown disillusioned with his highly popular St Trinian's School series but had promised his publisher Max Parrish another Christmas best-seller. While Searle was initially sceptical about another school-based project, he was won over by the examples he was given to read by Willans. Between the initial publication in 1953 and Willans' death in 1958 at the age of 47 three books were completed and most of a fourth (Back in the Jug Agane) written; the Compleet Molesworth anthology was also under way. The first book, Down with Skool!, was published in October 1953 and by that Christmas had sold, according to Searle, 53,848 copies, [1] surpassing the performance of the previous year's The Terror of St Trinian's.
Nigel Molesworth is a schoolboy at St Custard's, a fictional (and dysfunctional) prep school located in a carefully unspecified part of England. It is ruled with an iron fist by Headmaster "GRIMES" (BA, Stoke-on-Trent), who is constantly in search of cash to supplement his income and has a part-time business running a whelk stall. Other masters include Sigismund Arbuthnot, the "mad maths master", who frequently appears as Molesworth's nemesis in his daydreams.
St Custard's, according to Molesworth, "was built by a madman in 1836". The school's traditional local rivals are Porridge Court, who regularly beat St Custard's convincingly in all sporting events.
Molesworth's spelling is consistently poor throughout all the books, as many words are rendered phonetically, including the names of those Molesworth knows. Grimes' name is one of the very few he spells correctly, but he always writes it in all capital letters to signify his fear of him. Regardless, many fans find this feature endearing. The phrase "as any fule kno", [2] appended to many of Nigel's pronouncements, has achieved fame beyond its author and can sometimes be seen in the mainstream British press (usually in a satirical context; the phrase often appears in Private Eye ). It was used by J. K. Rowling to end an essay she wrote for Pegasus, the journal of the University of Exeter Department of Classics and Ancient History, reminiscing on her studies there. In fact, Rowling mentions in the essay that she had read the books. [3] (Notably, there is mention of a 'Latin pla' which Molesworth has to read: 'the Hogwarts'. The name also crops up for the headmaster of Porridge Court, who is named 'Hoggwart' in the book. [4] ) The phrase 'as any fule kno' was also used as the title of a Deep Purple song, "Any Fule Kno That".
The books in the series are, in order of original publication:
They are part of a British tradition of children's books set at boarding schools (school stories), which includes the Billy Bunter stories, the Jennings novels and most recently the Harry Potter books. Unlike these others, however, the Molesworth books do not consist of linear storylines but rather feature Molesworth's wisdom on a variety of topics as well as his fanciful daydreams. The topics covered extend from boarding-school life to reflections on the culture of 1950s Britain. Television (then still relatively novel to British households), the start of space travel and the atomic age, the Davy Crockett craze and "How to be a young Elizabethan" all feature, as well as more timeless topics such as Christmas, the French, journalism (with "N. Molesworth, Ace Reporter") and "Gurls".
Simon Brett later wrote two sequels to the series in which a grown-up Nigel offered his observations on subjects such as jobs, family, holidays and D.I.Y.
In 2022 Korero Press published the Molesworth diaries that appeared in Punch between August 1939 and December 1942 in one volume titled The Lost Diaries of Nigel Molesworth. They were illustrated by Uli Meyer in the style of Ronald Searle.
Some of the pupils at St Custard's:
Some of the staff at St Custard's:
Many of the staff are anonymous.
In 1987 the character was reprised for a four-part BBC Radio 4 series, Molesworth. Written by Simon Brett, the series portrayed Molesworth in middle age, still surrounded by many of the characters from his youth. Molesworth was played by Willie Rushton, with Penelope Nice as his wife Louise, and Clive Swift as the now aged ex-headmaster Grimes. [7]
In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century , Basil Fotherington-Tomas cameos in Chapter 2 as a member of the band Purple Orchestra.
Simon Anthony Lee Brett OBE FRSL is a British author of detective fiction, a playwright, and a producer-writer for television and radio. As an author, he is best known for his mystery series featuring Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter, Fethering, and Blotto & Twinks. His radio credits have included The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and Just a Minute.
St Trinian's is a British gag cartoon comic strip series, created and drawn by Ronald Searle from 1946 until 1952. The cartoons all centre on a boarding school for girls, where the teachers are sadists and the girls are juvenile delinquents. The series was Searle's most famous work and inspired a popular series of comedy films.
Ronald William Fordham Searle was an English artist and satirical cartoonist, comics artist, sculptor, medal designer and illustrator. He is perhaps best remembered as the creator of St Trinian's School and for his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth series.
Blundell's School is an independent co-educational boarding and day school in the English public school tradition, located in Tiverton, Devon. It was founded in 1604 under the will of Peter Blundell, one of the richest men in England at the time, and moved to its present site on the outskirts of the town in 1882.
Molesworth may refer to:
Herbert Geoffrey Willans, RNVR,, an English writer and journalist, is best known as the creator of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3B" and "curse of St. Custard's", as in the four books with illustrations by Ronald Searle.
The Belles of St Trinian's is a 1954 British comedy film, directed by Frank Launder, co-written by Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Hermione Baddeley. Inspired by British cartoonist Ronald Searle's St Trinian's School comic strips, the film focuses on the lives of the students and teachers of the fictional school, dealing with attempts to shut them down while their headmistress faces issues with financial troubles, which culminates in the students thwarting a scheme involving a racehorse.
Blue Murder at St Trinian's is a 1957 British comedy film, directed by Frank Launder, co-written by Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and starring Terry-Thomas, George Cole, Joyce Grenfell, Lionel Jeffries and Richard Wattis; the film also includes a brief cameo of Alastair Sim, reprising his lead role in the 1954 film, The Belles of St. Trinian's. Inspired by the St Trinian's School comic strips by British cartoonist Ronald Searle, the film is the second entry in the St. Trinian's film series, with its plot seeing the students of the fictional school making plans to secure a place on a European tour, all while subsequently aiding a criminal who is secretly seeking to escape the country with stolen jewels.
The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery is a British comedy film, directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, written by Sidney and Leslie Gilliat, and released on 4 April 1966. It is the last of the original series of films based on the St Trinian's School set of images and comics, and the only one to be produced in colour. The film stars a selection of actors from previous films in the series, including George Cole, Richard Wattis, Eric Barker, Michael Ripper, and Raymond Huntley, alongside Frankie Howerd, Reg Varney, Dora Bryan, and the voice of Stratford Johns.
Henry Cuthbert Edwards aka Flash Harry is a fictional character from the St. Trinian's series of films who first appears in the 1954 The Belles of St Trinian's and who may also be a spiv. The term refers to "an ostentatious, loudly-dressed, and usually ill-mannered man". The best-known portrayer is George Cole in the 1950s–1960s films.
"The Ballad of Davy Crockett" is a song with music by George Bruns and lyrics by Thomas W. Blackburn. It was introduced on ABC's television series Disneyland, in the premiere episode of October 27, 1954.
The Happiest Days of Your Life is a 1950 British comedy film directed by Frank Launder, based on the 1947 play of the same name by John Dighton. The two men also wrote the screenplay. It is one of a stable of classic British film comedies produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat for British Lion Film Corporation. The film was made on location in Liss and at Riverside Studios, London. In several respects, including some common casting, it was a precursor of the St. Trinian's films of the 1950s and 1960s.
A preparatory school in the United Kingdom is a fee-charging private primary school that caters for children up to approximately the age of 13. The term "preparatory school" is used as it prepares the children for the Common Entrance Examination in order to secure a place at an independent secondary school, typically one of the English public schools. They are also preferred by some parents in the hope of getting their child into a state selective grammar school. Most prep schools are inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, which is overseen by Ofsted on behalf of the Department for Education.
Basil Fotherington-Tomas is a classic fictional character in a series of books by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle featuring the archetypal English prep school boy of the 1950s, Nigel Molesworth, who is the supposed author.
The Molesworth Institute is a fictional organization started in 1956 with the aim of promoting library humour. It is a combination of real librarians and fictitious people, mostly literary characters. The founder and longtime director, Norman D. Stevens, has published a great many humorous articles about Library science under his title from the organization, and the institute has been mentioned in major publications in this field of study.
The school story is a fiction genre centring on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, at its most popular in the first half of the twentieth century. While examples do exist in other countries, it is most commonly set in English boarding schools and mostly written in girls' and boys' subgenres, reflecting the single-sex education typical until the 1950s. It focuses largely on friendship, honour and loyalty between pupils. Plots involving sports events, bullies, secrets, rivalry and bravery are often used to shape the school story.
Kaz Cooke is an Australian author, cartoonist and broadcaster. She has written several bestselling advice books for girls and women, including Real Gorgeous, Up the Duff, Kidwrangling. Girl Stuff and Women's Stuff, as well as a series of ebooks on women's health topics. Cooke has been a columnist for various Australian newspapers and magazines, including Dolly, The Age, The Australian, Who and The Canberra Times. A collection of her columns, Living with Crazy Buttocks, won the 2002 Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year. In 2008, Girl Stuff won the Australian Publishers Association's General Non-fiction Book of the Year, the Australian Booksellers Association Nielsen BookData Booksellers' Choice Award, and an honour prize from the Children’s Book Council of Australia.
St Trinian's is a 2007 British comedy film and the sixth in a long-running series of British films based on the works of cartoonist Ronald Searle and set in St Trinian's School. The first five films form a series, starting with The Belles of St. Trinian's in 1954, with sequels in 1957, 1960, 1966 and a reboot in 1980. The release of 2007, 27 years after the last entry, and 53 years after the first film, is a rebooting of the franchise, rather than a direct sequel, with certain plot elements borrowed from the first film.
Molesworth is a surname, and may refer to:
St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold is a 2009 British adventure comedy film directed by Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson, both of whom directed the previous film in the series. It is the seventh in a long running series of films based on the works of cartoonist Ronald Searle, and the second film produced since the franchise was rebooted in 2007.