Product details
- ISBN 9781788421850
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 14 Nov 2019
- Publisher: Duckworth Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The last of the humorous fictional memoirs of a hapless assistant schoolmaster.
It is to be A.J. Wentworth’s final appearance on the scholastic scene. Once more he dons his cap and gown – or, to be more precise, Rawlinson’s cap and gown – and returns to Burgrove for just one more time.
His final term includes a brief but broadening visit to the United States, in addition to the usual intellectual cut and thrust of the classroom. Whether he’s causing a stir on Fifth Avenue, or merely ‘trying to knock a bit of sense into a bunch of thick-headed boys,’ A.J. Wentworth fumbles, blusters and generally carries on.
A comic study in blinkered English manners, the Wentworth Papers will delight fans of P.G. Wodehouse or Grossmiths' Mr Pooter. First introduced to readers in the pages of Punch magazine, it was later dramatized for both BBC Radio and ITV drama.
Humphry Francis Ellis was born in 1907 in Lincolnshire, and educated at Tonbridge and Magdalen College, Oxford. Following a year as assistant master at Marlborough school he began to write for Punch magazine. In 1949 Ellis became Punch’s Literary and Deputy Editor, a post which he held until 1953. It was during this period that he developed the character of A. J. Wentworth, inspired by his experience as a schoolmaster. Punch continued to publish Ellis's work, though from 1954 he found a more lucrative market in The New Yorker, where the Wentworth stories proved very popular.
