A few words about Beverley Nichols

The prolific novelist, playwright, journalist, composer - and many other things including political activist - Beverley Nichols was born on September 9th 1898, so he shares a ninth day of the ninth month birthday with this blog. 

His four childen's books that feature the witch Miss Smith are the main reason for his appearance here, but there is a little more to say about him to mark the occasion.

Beverley Nichols and witches
I am still wondering where Beverley Nichols got his ideas about witches and evil from. I also wonder why The Wickedest Witch in the World (1971) was written so long after the Woodland Trilogy – there is a gap of 21 years.

There is a story called Super Witch: A Story for Children of all Ages in his unpublished papers; it is dated circa 1971.

We will probably never know why he returned to writing about witches at this time.

Houses and gardens
Beverley Nichols wrote a series of books about his houses and gardens. 

I learned recently that his book Down the Garden Path was the inspiration for Sellar & Yeatman's Garden Rubbish.

These books, which are all very good reads and are now what Beverley Nichols is best remembered for, were illustrated by the great decorative artist Rex Whistler.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part XII: The books of Sellar and Yeatman

The article about balancing depressing books with amusing and uplifting ones gives Terry Pratchett and Gerald Durrell as examples of people whose books can be used to counteract the damaging effects of negative and distressing material. 

After reading still more such material, I needed to take another break and find another antidote. I remembered the witty and amusing books of W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman: the best passages are good for dispelling dark clouds. Just like Rudyard Kipling's Stalky stories and Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle's Molesworth books, both of which are featured here, they are a good defence against the dark arts.

They may not mean much to people unfamiliar with traditional British culture though, and as time passes they may seem increasingly dated, stale, juvenile and irrelevant to British readers.

W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman
Scotsman and schoolmaster Walter Carruthers Sellar and Englishman Robert Julian Yeatman were born in 1898 and 1897 respectively. They met at Oriel College, Oxford and became lifelong friends. They collaborated on four humorous books, which were illustrated by John Reynolds:

1066 and All That (1930)   And Now All This (1932)
Horse Nonsense (1933)    Garden Rubbish (1936)

1066 and All That is by far the best known of the books and in my opinion much the funniest.

1066 and All That
1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates was first published as a series of articles in Punch magazine then in book form in 1930.

1066 and All That is a parody of the textbooks used for teaching British history in schools at the time. Familiarity with the style and material that is being parodied is essential for getting the most out of this little book.