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Jennings #4
Jennings and Darbishire
Prehistoric clodpoll! ‘What did you want to go and make a frantic bish like that for’ Rule number nine million and forty-seven: Any boy beetling into class with twelve slippery raw fish shall hereby be liable to be detained during Mr Wilkins’ pleasure.? Jennings turns journalist when he receives a printing kit for his birthday, and dubs himself Editor of the Form Three Times. Enlisting faithful Darbi as his assistant hack, Jennings sets off to the cove, where a French fishing vessel is moored, for their first story. But when their dreadful French ends in the unwelcome gift of a parcel of raw fish, the worse place they could hide it is in Mr Wilkins chimney! Frantic hoo-hah! Teething troubles fail to deter the tenacious Jennings, and his next scoop involves digging into Mr Wilkins past – what will he uncover this time? Super-wacko wheeze!
210 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
4 people are currently reading
186 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Buckeridge
111 books45 followersAnthony Malcolm Buckeridge was born in London but following the death of his banker father in the First World War he moved with his mother to Ross-on-Wye to live with his grandparents.
At the end of the war they returned to London where he 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 in Sussex. His experiences as a schoolboy there were instrumental in his later work, particularly in his famous Jennings series of novels.
Following the death of his 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 and he was later to become an active member of CND. Unfortunately at university he did not take a degree after failing Latin.
By then the couple had two children and, with a young family to support, he found himself teaching in Suffolk and Northamptonshire, which again provided further experiences for his later work. During the Second World War, he was called up as a fireman and wrote several plays for the stage before returning to teaching in Ramsgate.
He used to tell his pupils stories about the fictional character Jennings, who was based on an old school chum of his, Diarmid Jennings. Diarmid was a prep schoolboy boarding at Linbury Court Preparatory School, where the headmaster was Mr Pemberton-Oakes.
After World War II, he 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. 'Jennings Learns the Ropes', the first of his radio plays, was broadcast on 16 October 1948. And then in 1950, the first of 26 Jennings novels, 'Jennings Goes to School' was published.
'Jennings Follows a Clue' appeared in 1951 and then Jennings novels were published regularly through to 1977 before he reappeared in the 1990s with three books that ended with 'That's Jennings' in 1994. The books were as well known and as popular as Frank Richards' Billy Bunter books in their day and 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 and Jennings is called "Stompa". And in France Jennings was, rather oddly, known as Bennett!
He also wrote five novels featuring a north London Grammar School boy, Rex Milligan, one other novel, 'A Funny Thing Happened: The First [and only] Adventure of the Blighs' (1953), wrote a collection of short stories, 'Stories for Boys' (1957), his autobiography, 'While I Remember' (1999) and edited an anthology, 'In and Out of School' (1958).
In 1962 he met his second wife, Eileen Selby. They settled near Lewes where he continued to write and from where he also appeared in small (non-singing) roles at Glyndebourne.
He was awarded the OBE in 2003.
He died on 28 June 2004 after a spell of ill health with his second wife Eileen and three children, two from his first marriage, surviving him.
Gerry Wolstenholme
September 2010
At the end of the war they returned to London where he 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 in Sussex. His experiences as a schoolboy there were instrumental in his later work, particularly in his famous Jennings series of novels.
Following the death of his 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 and he was later to become an active member of CND. Unfortunately at university he did not take a degree after failing Latin.
By then the couple had two children and, with a young family to support, he found himself teaching in Suffolk and Northamptonshire, which again provided further experiences for his later work. During the Second World War, he was called up as a fireman and wrote several plays for the stage before returning to teaching in Ramsgate.
He used to tell his pupils stories about the fictional character Jennings, who was based on an old school chum of his, Diarmid Jennings. Diarmid was a prep schoolboy boarding at Linbury Court Preparatory School, where the headmaster was Mr Pemberton-Oakes.
After World War II, he 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. 'Jennings Learns the Ropes', the first of his radio plays, was broadcast on 16 October 1948. And then in 1950, the first of 26 Jennings novels, 'Jennings Goes to School' was published.
'Jennings Follows a Clue' appeared in 1951 and then Jennings novels were published regularly through to 1977 before he reappeared in the 1990s with three books that ended with 'That's Jennings' in 1994. The books were as well known and as popular as Frank Richards' Billy Bunter books in their day and 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 and Jennings is called "Stompa". And in France Jennings was, rather oddly, known as Bennett!
He also wrote five novels featuring a north London Grammar School boy, Rex Milligan, one other novel, 'A Funny Thing Happened: The First [and only] Adventure of the Blighs' (1953), wrote a collection of short stories, 'Stories for Boys' (1957), his autobiography, 'While I Remember' (1999) and edited an anthology, 'In and Out of School' (1958).
In 1962 he met his second wife, Eileen Selby. They settled near Lewes where he continued to write and from where he also appeared in small (non-singing) roles at Glyndebourne.
He was awarded the OBE in 2003.
He died on 28 June 2004 after a spell of ill health with his second wife Eileen and three children, two from his first marriage, surviving him.
Gerry Wolstenholme
September 2010
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 8, 2012
There was a time (I was aged eight or nine) when nothing was more important to me than the Jennings books. Back then I used to get up at five o’clock in the morning in order to read as much Jennings as possible before breakfast, and I still have tremendous affection for Anthony Buckeridge’s charming, hilarious chronicles of his eleven-year old hero and his absurd misadventures at Linbury Court Preparatory School. If I choose Jennings and Darbishire (Darbishire beings Jennings’ bespectacled sidekick) as my particular favourite, there’s a reason. This is the one in which Aunt Angela sends Jennings “The Ideal Junior Printing Outfit” for his birthday, and Jennings starts his own newspaper, the “Form Three Times.” To say that one was inspired in one’s literary career by the barely-literate Jennings may be an odd claim, but it was because of this book that I started the first of a succession of school newspapers of my own.
Jennings, who originated on the BBC radio “Children’s Hour” in 1948, before graduating to book form in 1950, had a tremendous run in the fifties and sixties. By the seventies his days were numbered, and the last books are, alas, lamentable in their attempts at modernity (notably Jennings at Large, in which eccentric Aunt Angela has been transformed into a social worker, living in a tower block in south London, and Jennings spends much of the book not only away from school but in the company of a girl). The Jennings books, at their best, are a species of pastoral, evoking a very English, idealised world of boyhood innocence. What was Buckeridge to do next? Send Jennings to a comprehensive school? Jennings couldn’t keep up with the times, and Collins, the original publishers, dropped the series in the late seventies. 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. For the real Jennings experience, seek out the old Collins hardbacks, preferably with dustjackets intact.
(In case the reference to modernised texts sets off alarm bells in some, let me explain. There is no racism or overt snobbery in the Jennings books. Buckeridge, who seems to have been remarkably liberal for a children’s writer, is a world away from Blyton or Captain W. E. Johns; there’s no need for the silent surgery I have seen in one 1912 children’s classic in which a black horse that once had a six-letter name starting with “N” has now been renamed “Ebony.” In Jennings, it’s a case of purportedly dated elements being removed, such as references to old British currency, and up-to-date references substituted; evidently, modern children could not be expected to tolerate the elitist implications of the term “Preparatory School,” so the boys now just go to “Linbury Court School.” As a child, I found the whole idea of a “Preparatory School” quite magical, even though I was never going to get any closer to one in real life than Mount Gambier East Primary.)
Jennings, who originated on the BBC radio “Children’s Hour” in 1948, before graduating to book form in 1950, had a tremendous run in the fifties and sixties. By the seventies his days were numbered, and the last books are, alas, lamentable in their attempts at modernity (notably Jennings at Large, in which eccentric Aunt Angela has been transformed into a social worker, living in a tower block in south London, and Jennings spends much of the book not only away from school but in the company of a girl). The Jennings books, at their best, are a species of pastoral, evoking a very English, idealised world of boyhood innocence. What was Buckeridge to do next? Send Jennings to a comprehensive school? Jennings couldn’t keep up with the times, and Collins, the original publishers, dropped the series in the late seventies. 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. For the real Jennings experience, seek out the old Collins hardbacks, preferably with dustjackets intact.
(In case the reference to modernised texts sets off alarm bells in some, let me explain. There is no racism or overt snobbery in the Jennings books. Buckeridge, who seems to have been remarkably liberal for a children’s writer, is a world away from Blyton or Captain W. E. Johns; there’s no need for the silent surgery I have seen in one 1912 children’s classic in which a black horse that once had a six-letter name starting with “N” has now been renamed “Ebony.” In Jennings, it’s a case of purportedly dated elements being removed, such as references to old British currency, and up-to-date references substituted; evidently, modern children could not be expected to tolerate the elitist implications of the term “Preparatory School,” so the boys now just go to “Linbury Court School.” As a child, I found the whole idea of a “Preparatory School” quite magical, even though I was never going to get any closer to one in real life than Mount Gambier East Primary.)
March 2, 2012
Long before I discovered Wodehouse, there was Buckeridge. This is my favourite of all the Jennings books. (My sister pinched my copy for the nephews, grr, so I had to buy one of the annoying "modernized" reprints with Binns minor and Bromwich major having lost their cognomens, all the shillings changed to pounds, and for some particularly peculiar reason, the doughnuts in the stuck-in-the-teashop chapter changed to flapjacks. (Mind you, it did make me look up an English flapjack recipe and make some, but how could even a ten-year-old boy eat a plate of super-heavy solid-rolled-oat-and-sugar squares?)) The fish up the chimney was, at that point in my life, the funniest thing I had ever read, and I still can't read it without laughing. The long chain of events that leads to the fish up the chimney begins with Aunt Angela sending Jennings a printing kit; each step between that and the fish in the chimney is, to the boys, utterly obvious and logical. Brilliant.
December 29, 2014
This is certainly one of the most consistently funny Jennings books, with every story arc providing laughs and intrigue.
Highlight: Mr Wilkins and his sister exchange information with Jennings and Darbishire.
Highlight: Mr Wilkins and his sister exchange information with Jennings and Darbishire.
September 1, 2020
Try printing a letter to your aunt, thanking her for the printing press she gave you for your 11th birthday and requesting some replacement letter 'e's that have been lost without recourse to the letter 'e'. Then go fishing down Old Wilkie’s chimney for a parcel of unsolicited fish you’ve bunged up there in panic.
December 16, 2012
Part of revisiting the books I loved when I was young. I'm so pleased to find I still enjoy these boys' boarding school stories so much. The daftness, the fun, the simultaneously archaic and imaginative language...and they still make me laugh. I'm glad I've the whole series to reread.
January 7, 2018
Lots of chuckles when reading whole passages out loud to my husband even though I never attended an all-boy British boarding school and neither did he. I imagine that this might have been the result if P. G. Wodehouse had written books using children as characters instead of writing about Jeeves and Wooster.
I was told that I should have read #1 in the series Jennings Goes To School first and I certainly intend to go back and read it now.
I was told that I should have read #1 in the series Jennings Goes To School first and I certainly intend to go back and read it now.
November 4, 2011
Pretty exquisite as a first read. Hadchi zine, l'khir o l'baraka !
Plutôt destiné pour les enfants, n'empêche, il est plutôt correct et so british.
Plutôt destiné pour les enfants, n'empêche, il est plutôt correct et so british.
January 15, 2016
Lots of laugh out loud moments abound - my favourite being when Jennings and Darbishire stealthily join their own search party.
March 31, 2016
I think this is probably the most wizard of the series, with the completely surrealistic fish in the chimney episode.
September 4, 2024
In the fourth book of the series, Jennings, always full of energy and naïve enthusiasm, receives a printing set and a camera as birthday presents. Dragging along his perennial sidekick Darbishire, he decides to create a school paper, and all kind of chaos ensues.
The book is a bit episodic, but everything connects to the printing set and the paper. It had some really funny moments, like the whole misadventure with the fish and Mr. Wilkin's chimney, or the time the two boys get lost from the rest of the party when returning from an away school football match and end up taking the wrong train. There's a search party organized to look for them around the country station where they got off, and the boys, thinking that the others are lost too, stealthily join them in the dark, hoping their own absence had not been noticed. It results in them being part of the search party that was looking for them, with very amusing results.
I have to admit the gentle humor of these books work well for me, and it's always a pleasure to join Jennings and Darbishire in their innocent but chaotic schemes. Also, their teacher Mr. Carter is great, and Mr. Wilkins is not so great but he is very amusing.
The book is a bit episodic, but everything connects to the printing set and the paper. It had some really funny moments, like the whole misadventure with the fish and Mr. Wilkin's chimney, or the time the two boys get lost from the rest of the party when returning from an away school football match and end up taking the wrong train. There's a search party organized to look for them around the country station where they got off, and the boys, thinking that the others are lost too, stealthily join them in the dark, hoping their own absence had not been noticed. It results in them being part of the search party that was looking for them, with very amusing results.
I have to admit the gentle humor of these books work well for me, and it's always a pleasure to join Jennings and Darbishire in their innocent but chaotic schemes. Also, their teacher Mr. Carter is great, and Mr. Wilkins is not so great but he is very amusing.
June 8, 2023
It's not Jennings if he doesn't make trouble for himself and his best friend, Darbi. The story began with Jennings' birthday and the presents that made him started a magazine called Form Three Times. In order to get an update news, Jennings and Darbi went to the port, meeting French fishermen who gave them fish as a present. Now, this unwelcome gift will only bring adversity for both boys.
The most interesting part is when they got carried away by a train, again because Jennings' foolishness, and when the searching group were looking for them, they sneaked in to the group!
I'll never understand what's on Jennings' mind and it makes it a lot amusing to read his adventure!
The most interesting part is when they got carried away by a train, again because Jennings' foolishness, and when the searching group were looking for them, they sneaked in to the group!
I'll never understand what's on Jennings' mind and it makes it a lot amusing to read his adventure!
May 8, 2021
I remember reading this book as a boy and thinking Jennings reaching his 11th birthday made him awfully cool. I'm way beyond 11 now but this holds up well.
Jennings' Aunt Angela sends him a printing press for his birthday, so he and Darby decide to launch a third-form newspaper. As is usual, things go insane fast: Jennings and Darbishire wandering the moors, stuffing a packet of fish up Old Wilkie's chimney, fighting algebra and losing, and having a very awkward meal with Mr. Wilkins' sister.
A lot of fun.
Jennings' Aunt Angela sends him a printing press for his birthday, so he and Darby decide to launch a third-form newspaper. As is usual, things go insane fast: Jennings and Darbishire wandering the moors, stuffing a packet of fish up Old Wilkie's chimney, fighting algebra and losing, and having a very awkward meal with Mr. Wilkins' sister.
A lot of fun.
August 20, 2024
I read this in a couple of hours, having last read it perhaps 50 years ago. I remembered every incident - the poetry competition; Jennings trying to fry fish in the darkroom; having cakes with Old Wilkie's sister; Darbishire stranded in Foxy Type's detention class at a different school; Haltpostle Whistle, or was it Whistlehalt Postle?- and read them as old friends. Such happy memories were evoked by this lovely writing from an older, more innocent time. These books have stood the test of time well, with only the occasional anachronistic attitude which jarred slightly.
August 30, 2019
Two boys in an English boarding school get up to all sorts of well-natured shenanigans. A fun little book with slightly flat yet still enjoyable characters and a predictable but cozy plot: the boys are prone to trouble but not malice, and the teachers are stern yet loving. Idyllic early 20th century boarding school hijinx.
March 8, 2022
Read in March 2022
I know this is no great masterpiece of literature, but it never pretended to be. Reading this book was pure delight all along. What imagination! What lively style! What humanity and love for all specimens of human beings!
I highly recommend this whenever you are in need of some pain-killer, mood-booster or zygomatics exercising.
March 15, 2026
absolutely hilarious. it's been a while i finished a book in a single day
August 4, 2023
Fossilized fishooks, its Jen's birthday and as well as an excellent cake and a nifty camera, he's got a John Bull printing kit from dear old Aunt Angela. Oh what fun we all had with them, eh? NOT!! And Darbishire soon loses the e's! But as always nothing can deter Jennings from his chosen new project The Form Three Times. They don't write 'em like that any more!
July 26, 2019
Read to this one now and really enjoying it. I love writing style and everything Describe in this book.
November 11, 2024
This was the first Jennings book that was ever read to me as a child, and it absolutely slayed me at the time. Many years later, I still find parts of it very funny, some of it a little lacklustre, and the book overall on a par with most of the early works in the series.
Highlight: Darbishire's efforts to find Mr Wilkins' study unoccupied are repeatedly frustrated.
Lowlight: Venables is able to prove at once the legitimacy of his competition entry thanks to the author not bothering to remember his earlier set-up.
Highlight: Darbishire's efforts to find Mr Wilkins' study unoccupied are repeatedly frustrated.
Lowlight: Venables is able to prove at once the legitimacy of his competition entry thanks to the author not bothering to remember his earlier set-up.
July 1, 2009
I'm going to have trouble remembering the other titles, so, you can just imagine.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews