Tags
any fule kno, Back in the Jug Agane, Books, British, Down with Skool!, Geoffrey Willans, Headmaster Grimes, How to be Topp, How to Stay Topp, Molesworth Rites Again, Molesworth's Guide to the Atommic Age, Ronald Searle, Sigismund Arbuthnot, St. Custard's, The Compleet Molesworth, The Young Elizabethan, Whizz for Atomms
The Compleet Molesworth
Nigel Molesworth is the title character of a book series written be Geoffrey Willans and illustrated by Ronald Searle. Originally Nigel’s adventures appeared in installments in the children’s magazine The Young Elizabethan. The first installment appeared in 1953 and ran until Willans’ death in 1958. By that time, they had enough to fill three books and half of a fourth. Hence The Compleet Molesworth was born. The books in the anthology include: Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents (1953), How to Be Topp: A Guide to Sukcess for Tiny Pupils, Including All There is to Kno about Space (1954), Whizz for Atomms: A Guide to Survival in the 20th Century for Fellow Pupils, their Doting Maters, Pompous Paters and Any Others who are Interested (1956; in the U.S. it was published as Molesworth’s Guide to the Atommic Age) and Back in the Jug Agane (1959).
Nigel was a schoolboy at St. Custard’s, a fictional and terrible prep school in an unspecified part of England. The school is run by the iron-fisted Headmaster Grimes. The maths teacher Sigismund Arbuthnot frequently appears as Molesworth’s daydream nemesis. As you can tell by the book’s title, Nigel’s spelling is poor. It popularized the phrase “any fule kno.” In the 1980s, two sequels appeared in which a grown up Nigel offered his observations on jobs, family, holidays and D.I.Y. in Molesworth Rites Again (1983) and How to Stay Topp
(1987).
Walk Memory Lane 