Mon 27 Apr 2020
A Review by David Vineyard: CAPT. W. E. JOHNS – Biggles in the Blue.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
CAPT. W. E. JOHNS – Biggles in the Blue. Biggles #45. Brockhampton Press, UK, hardcover, 1953. Knight, UK, paperback, 1968. Reprinted several times. No US edition. Readable online at www.archive.org.
Biggles smiled. “Snakes don’t bother me. I can handle them. After all, I’ve had a lot of experience – as you know.â€
“I believe it is fact that even the best snake-charmers usually die of snake bite at the end,†said von Stalhien softly. “I merely mention the danger in passing…â€
That bit of classic badinage could have come from any thriller written from the twenties on, but in this case it is between two of the most popular adversaries in young adult fiction in the United Kingdom, James Bigglesworth and his frequent Moriarity Erich von Stalhein,
The year is 1953, and Bigglesworth of the RAF and the Special Air Police is in Jamaica confronting Erich von Stalhein his old adversary going back to WW I in peacetime. A German war criminal named Wolff has died in Jamaica posing as a man named Hagen and in his home there is the clue to the secret that von Stalhein and Biggles are both after, plans of experimental weapons including the dreaded V series rockets that fell on London late in the war.
Von Stalhien has connections in Eastern Europe and a new master, the Russian Zorotov.
The papers are on an island, but which of the many small cays in the area? The clue is somewhere in Wolff/Hagen’s Kingston home
As Air Commodore Raymond of the Special Air Police explained when he sent Detective Inspector Bigglesworh on the case: “…get things clear. We want these plans, not so much for our own use but to prevent them falling into the hands of a potential enemy.â€
Which finds Biggles, as his friends call him, ace of two wars, and hero of dozens of adventures in war and out, in Jamaica at Wolff/Hagen’s home Rumkeg Haven, with his usual team of Air Constables Algy, Bert, and Ginger.
W. E. Johns, the author of the popular Biggles series that eventually would include books, radio (Monty Python alumni Michael Palin read Biggles Flies North on radio), comics, a flying teddy bear also named Biggles, and even a big budget movie, Biggles, Adventures in Time, was himself a pilot in the Great War whose greatest success came with the adventures of his young First War ace. Johns also wrote some adult thrillers and even cracked the British pulp Thriller, but none of his other work inspired the long term success as the adventures of Biggles and his friends. Many of the books are still in print or at least easily available.
Johns’ affections for the character and investment in his adventures make the Biggles series a good deal more personal than many such works.
The Biggles books run in the fifty to sixty thousand word range and include illustrations by frequent illustrator Peter Archer. The writing is a bit better generally than the equivalent Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew in this country, with somewhat more action and more dangerous villains. The level of action isn’t far off the standard thriller of the twenties and thirties or the hero pulps here though there is a good deal of good old chums business — though that isn’t far off the kind of schoolboy thing Bulldog Drummond got up to with his pals.
Surprisingly the book is less politically incorrect than you might expect. There is a minor black villain (Morgan, who is at least a would be Napoleon and not merely a thug), but also a strong smart black woman who saves the boys lives and helps them get the best of von Stalhein and the Russian submarine he stalks them in. That hasn’t been true of all the Biggles books I’ve read, but they are generally at least less tiresome than most books of that era about such things.
As juvenile fiction of the time period — roughly the early thirties through the sixties — the Biggles series reads well enough, contains some genuine thrills, and considering it began as the adventures of a World War One ace has certainly got around over the years, taking Biggles to every corner of the globe. His adventures may not be well known on these shores, but in much of the world his name is one to conjure with.
April 29th, 2020 at 1:23 pm
Not a series that translated very well to the American market, I’m sorry to say. I wonder if any of them were published here?
April 29th, 2020 at 1:27 pm
I’ve just answered my own question: No, not a one.
April 29th, 2020 at 10:07 pm
Quite a few found their way into the country via Canada like many Peter Cheyney books. I have seen a Biggles or two in second hand stores over the years, but no one really thought of trying him out in the American flying pulps where he would have fit well.
For that matter Sexton Blake never had much of a presence here (even when at least the Ballinger ones were being reprinted here). No few British series like Norman Conquest never cracked the American market though they would have fared well in the pulps.
May 1st, 2020 at 2:47 am
The illustrator most readers associate with the Biggles books is Leslie Stead. He provided six color plates and the dust jacket for the first edition of this particular book (and illustrated most, if not all, of the many more titles in the series published by Hodder & Stoughton). The story was also adapted as a radio drama by the BBC for broadcast as a serial during its Children’s Hour. I followed it avidly as a ten-year-old and have a copy of the original Brockhampton Press edition.
May 26th, 2021 at 2:20 pm
I live in the UK, but have stayed in the Bahamas many times. Including visiting Great Inagua. The flamingos are amazing there.
During the early part of the Second World War, RAF pilots would swoop over the island to stir up the birds. A clear reference in one of the illustrations.
Johns was a great collector of ideas, and read and travelled. There is a wonderful book called Inagua a lonely and forgotten island, by Walter Klingel, from the 1930’s. About two shipwrecked American naturalists caught in the great storm on the eastern seaboard of 1929. Read that and you will find the same crossing of remarkable terrain as Ginger experiences in the novel. The same redoubtable black lady living alone in a cabin.
Biggles books are fabulous. Many Battle of Britain pilots were inspired by Johns stories of the 30’s. So much so that he was requested by the War Department to create an equivalent female character, which he did. Worrals.
Some of the very best of nearly 100 books, would be:
Biggles Flies East
Biggles Flies West
The Cruise of the Condor
Biggles flies South
Biggles in the South Seas
Biggles Flies North
Biggles in the Baltic
Biggles sees it through
Biggles defies the Swastika
Biggles sweeps the Desert
Biggles second Case