OT Biggles

[GB]

I used to read Biggles books when a child, but this is quite an eye-opener:

[alan_m]

Biggles flies undone.

[maus]

I remember his stories from when I was young. Great fun.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have pretty much every Biggles book as epub ebook if anyone wants it. Including this one.

[Brian Gaff]

I read them also, and some of the ww1 ones were quite hard hitting and obviously anti war. I think many of those short stories were from a magazine. The one that sticks in my mind is where he was strung along by a lady behind enemy lines and she turned out to be a spy, and was basically working him for Intel. There is that very old joke of course. Boggles Flies undone. I got as far as the ones based in 1950s, but after that he was either a person with eternal youth or reborn. Still the plots were pretty good. My English teacher hated his of writing. I never did know why. WE Johns with his monocle, a rather plump guy as I recall. Was he not also behind Worrals and Gimlet stories? Brian

[pinnerite]

There is an aerodrome at Dehham on or near which is a restaurant named "Biggles". I have yet to give it a try.

ATB

Alan

[Vir Campestris]

That is correct. My mother had some Worrals books, and I had a couple of Gimlet ones along with all the Biggles ones.

Andy

[Jim Jackson]

Biggles flies back to Front

[Bert Coules]

For some reason I've never been drawn to the Biggles books, but Johns' science fiction series, which seems to be far less well known, is splendid and, in some ways, ahead of its time.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The first few stories were pretty 'adult' featuring dead friends, broken love affairs and a lot of aeroplanes. Later in he just churned out pulp fiction for kids. I think I read a scifi of his once Not bad stuff

[brian]

In message <ues86u$1vlsl$ [e-mail], GB [e-mail] writes

Wizard prang.

B

[JNugent]

I read a lot of them. The little group headed by Biggles seemed to own a lot of different aircraft, including (IIRC) a Tiger Moth and an Auster.

My favourite was "Biggles Hits The Trail".

[The Natural Philosopher]

Blimey. they were forever writing them off and getting new ones, as I remember.

I prefer the very first ones when WEJ was writing for what he hoped would be an adult audience.

I believe they were written as short stories in a magazine, and are now available as 'here come the camels' or 'biggles, fighter pilot'

In my collection of ebooks they are 'Biggles of the Camel Squadron' , 'Biggles, Pioneer Air fighter' and 'Biggles of the Fighter Squadron' and 'Biggles - the Camels are coming'

They include just about every actual and real curious event from WWI. a plane that landed perfectly at its home airfields with stone dead pilot springs to mind. Biggles was a composite of all the aces of the time. So its a mix of history and fiction.

Later on it was simply pot boiling. My other favourite is the tongue in cheek 'Biggles looks back' where an ageing Biggles talks to his arch enemy Erich Von Stalhein and various curious facts from the past are revealed.