Jennings and Darbishire

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Miss Margaret Wilkins – Old Wilkie's pleasant and attractive younger sister, a London-based nurse, who occasionally visits her brother and nearly always has him wrapped round her little finger, especially when she needs him to look after her Siamese kitten, Pyewacket. A class newspaper - the 'Form three times' provides a rough string to hold the episodes together but they are funny enough by themselves to carry the book, the Pottlewhistle Halt episode in particular is hilarious. The corridors reverberate to a crescendo of "voom-voom" noises, as rockets, piloted by "Butch Breakaway" Jennings, and his "bald-headed scientist" colleague, Darbishire, take off for the Moon as Lunatickians!

Comradeship, behaving fairly and a desire to ‘do the right thing’, even though the school staff might not agree with the boys’ view of what that right thing was, runs through the books. Dr Basil Featherstonehaugh Hipkin – an absent-minded zoologist who meets Jennings and Darbishire when they accidentally push him into the river while they are on an illicit boating expedition.Two broken tennis rackets lead to Jennings becoming a potholer and Darbishire a prehistoric cave painter, not to mention an explosive attempt to make a cup of tea for Old Wilkie on the school picnic. Later, the pig is exchanged for a jar of bath salts, which Jennings gives to Matron - only to discover, to his horror, that the jar may also contain a drawing pin. The characters were originally created for radio and appeared in a regular series on Children's Hour from the late 1940s. Her predecessor, who features most prominently in 'Jennings Goes To School', is also kind-hearted, but less popular with the boys, as she is rather more brisk and no-nonsense in her approach and has, in Buckeridge's words, 'little sympathy with junk-filled pockets and hair that will not stay parted'. Enlisting faithful Darbishire as his assistant hack, Jennings sets off to the cove, where a French fishing vessel is moored, for their first story.

Jennings Follows a Clue puts together Jennings’ enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes, the attempted sale of a cine camera, mysterious lights in the San, and a burglary, which all culminate at the school’s Sports’ Day. The plot focusses on the chaos that ensues after Jennings receives a printing kit for his birthday and starts his own newspaper.Jennings is full of ideas, and Darbishire follows, but neither of them are inclined too much to think through the consequences of their actions.