Biggles’ Dangerous Mission

Biggles’ Big Adventures

Capt W E Johns

Allen & Unwin 2008

Biggles is back ! Who? Squadron Leader James Bigglesworth, British flying ace and hero to many boys after World War 1. Biggles was the lead character in a huge series of 100 books published from 1932, based on Captain Johns’ wartime experiences. Biggles became a legend in British literature, and received passing mention as “Cardinal Biggles” of the Spanish Inquisition in Monty Python, one of Rimmer’s books in Red Dwarf, a Terry Pratchett novel Good Omens, and a more subtle mention as Captain Jack in Doctor Who. There was even an unsuccessful Australian radio series (“The Air Adventures of BIGGLES ! “) plus a video game and a movie. His career spanned World War 1, 2 and even the Cold War years, helping him live up to his reputation as “the British Empire’s Most Fearless Pilot Adventurer”. Johns’ last book, Biggles Does Some Homework, was partly written when he died in 1997. The 100^th book was a collection of unpublished stories.

What was Biggles’ appeal? Originally it was the level of detail that Johns could include in his books. He was fascinated by the aircraft (he was a bomber pilot himself) and their construction and performance, and he imparted this enthusiasm in his tales of aerial combat. The plots were complex enough to hold the interest, the action fast enough to keep you reading. Character development was minimal, though, and this was later used as a negative leading to Biggles books being withdrawn from libraries. Even the baddie, Erich von Stalhein, was rather two-dimensional. He kept turning up in the books, though, and his appearance was eagerly awaited by readers to see what new mischief he was up to. The various books covered most of the British Empire when it really was an Empire, so there was even a bit of geography and colonial history to learn from them.

The two books listed in the title are a fairly representative sample of the post-WW1 stories. Surprisingly I still enjoyed each one of them. They now seem a bit outdated, especially in the aircraft descriptions, and the storylines are a little quaint, but they hold up remarkably well. They represent an excellent example of boy’s fiction of the time. Try your young sons on them and see if they can get into them. I suspect they will, in spite of the lack of computers and jet engines, because the detailed descriptions allow the reader to use his imagination. I suspect also that they will appeal to the older fathers who will remember Biggles fondly. You may be surprised at just how well written the books were, in spite of literary considerations.

I learned to enjoy reading with Biggles books. They were challenging enough for an eight year old to come to grips with. There were new words to look up. The plots held my attention. The books widened my vocabulary, taught me correct spelling and grammar, and stimulated my imagination. It was something of a shock to hear some decades ago that a group of librarians had decided to take Biggles off their shelves because the books had “no literary merit”, whatever that was. This strange decision was based on the lack of character development, simplistic plots, colonial attitudes, and violence. These were the very things that kept me reading the books! Book number 29, “Biggles Fails To Return”, may have been prophetic. I wonder if these librarians ever looked for character development in the Bible?

The stories are an interesting reflection of the great colonial age of the British Empire. The natives are either loyal followers or untrustworthy savages, or are simply ignored. It’s not patronizing, that’s just the way it was. The frontier colonies like the Yukon in Canada are still shown as a later-day version of the Wild West. The aircraft is the way of the future for the Empire to keep in contact despite the enormous distances. British colonial outposts are still pictured as vaguely uncivilized, with the British providing the only culture. There are a lot of historical attitudes hidden in these books.

In the last decade or so kids have been fed a load of pre-digested, pre-visualised entertainment in videos and DVDs and TV shows, and the skill of imagining something in your own mind seems to have been lost. Strangely enough, last year librarians were praising the Harry Potter books for encouraging children to take up reading again. That’s exactly what the Biggles books were about – encouraging kids to entertain themselves by reading. Like Harry Potter, I think there are more than a few adults out there who will enjoy reading Biggles as well. Go on, try it.

Maybe there should be one more book in the series– “Biggles Makes a Comeback”.

This review will appear in Volume 2:1 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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